


Secrets, OR, some kinda love story

by Ganymeme



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: 5+1 Things, Bisexual Male Character, Canon Disabled Character, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist Manga, Canonical Character Death, Hospitalization, M/M, Physical Disability, Pre-Canon, Queer Character, Smoking, Team Cameos - Freeform, background hints of Maria/Riza, please don't actually hook up with your CO kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-10-28 03:59:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17780165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ganymeme/pseuds/Ganymeme
Summary: Five times Jean Havoc kissed Roy Mustang - and one time everyone else saw. OR: Jean Havoc making questionable life choices and (mostly) refusing to regret them.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> This started life as a much shorter prompt fill ficlet, but wouldn't leave me alone, so... here we are! (With thanks to SerendipitousOracle for the beta read, any remaining mistakes are my own, etc. etc.)
> 
> M rating is maybe me being over-cautious, but it's got lotsa Adult Themes(TM). As the tags say, this is explicitly following _manga_ canon, not BH which will be 100% relevant. We start pre-canon and go all the way up to post-canon, which I mention because specifically the #canon disabled character tag only really becomes relevant in the final couple chapters.

“Hey, LT!” 

Walther, athletic bastard that he was, sounded way too cheery for the ass-end of an hour-long obstacle course. Jean was flaked out on his back melting into a puddle of muddy sweat under the summer sun, any pretence at officer’s dignity abandoned somewhere back in the swamp of the third obstacle. He felt the _thud_ of bootsteps halt next to him and opened his eyes. Corporal Walther was grinning down at him - and looking as fresh-faced as if he’d gone for a morning jog. Asshole.

“Don’t know ‘im,” Jean croaked out. “No LTs around here. Go find another one.” He shut his eyes so all he could see was the red glow of sunlight and not the face of the traitorous subordinate who had knocked him _off a wall_ and sent him nose-first into the mud.

Walther’s grin grew. “Yessir,” he said, loyally and way _way_ too cheerfully. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave Jean to his puddle-melting efforts. 

“Just thought I’d let you know, that new Lieutenant-Colonel, with the 5th? He’s been watching you real close.”

Every muscle in his legs was screaming at him and there was a scrape of mysterious origin on the inside of his arm stinging something awful. It was all distracting enough that it took a hot second for Walther’s words to register.

Then his stomach plummeted down to somewhere by his fucking _knees_ and Jean’s eyes flew open. He stared up at his B-squad leader in horror.

“ _What?_ The new- _fuck_!” Walther was still grinning as Jean bolted to his feet. If he was a different sort of commander, Jean would tell him off for taking obvious glee at a ranking officer’s panic. But he wasn’t that sort of asshole, and Walther was a good kid besides, when he wasn’t pushing Jean off walls.

The training grounds were packed with soldiers - they had the whole fucking company out here running the obstacle course, for some unholy reason - but Jean’s platoon was stuck on one edge of the grounds, so it was easy enough to get a look at the handful of spectators. He scanned swiftly, marking and discarding (B company soldiers, a few nervous looking Signals Corps boffins), until he got to a dark-haired man lounging against a fence-post, dressed in full blues.

There was no one else nearby who looked like they might be an officer, so Jean squared his shoulders and headed over.

“I’ll let the Sergeant know!” Walther called out, and Jean waved a hand in acknowledgement. 

 

He wasn’t real sure what he’d expected the 5th’s infamous Flame Alchemist to look like. The rumours of him being a demon from the circles of hell with hands made of fire were clearly bullshit. But Jean had definitely not expected him to be so… young. Or good-looking. He leaned against that fence post like he was posing for a pin-up poster, black hair falling down to his eyes in a rakish, disheveled sweep. Jean resisted the urge to ogle the long line of the man’s body and the tilt of his hips, but just barely. 

The heels of Jean's boots made a squelching sound when he tried to click them as he saluted. 

“Sir!”

The Lieutenant-Colonel returned the salute and then dropped it with a casual wave of a gloved hand. 

“At ease, Lieutenant. Can I help you?” His voice was light, polite. It didn’t sound at all like he was preparing to tear a strip off Jean.

“Uh-” Jean tried not to sag with relief, he really did, but dammit, he was _sore_ , and he usually only saw _his_ CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Kumar, up close and personal when he’d fucked something up.

“Dunno, sir,” he said, scrambling for something not completely inane. “Corporal Walthers said you’d been watching, um. Me?”

He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth and hid a wince. Fuck, that sounded dumb. Probably he was just watching Jean’s platoon, and Walther was having him on.

But a small smile, too warm to be anything but genuine, lit up the Lieutenant-Colonel’s face, dark eyes practically dancing, and shit, but he really was good-looking. It was way not fair.

“Corporal Walthers has sharp eyes,” he said and Jean- well, he kept his mouth shut at least, but it was a struggle, not to gawp like a stunned country bumpkin.

(You _are_ a bumpkin, he could hear Breda saying, in the back of his mind.)

Jean waited, expecting something else to be said, but nothing was. There was just the Lieutenant-Colonel’s small, pleased smile - and his steady gaze darting down then up. Shit. Had he just-? No. No way.

“Uh, right. Well that’s. There’s nothing… wrong, then? Sir?”

“Nothing at all, Lieutenant,” the man said. He straightened up, abrupt as a cat, and smoothed out the front of his coat with gloved hands. Gloves that weren’t strictly uniform. There was a red design stitched on the back of them, circles and triangles. _Alchemist_ , Jean remembered and he glanced down towards the man’s hips. He spotted the flash of silver chain before he caught himself and hauled his eyes back up to the ranking officer’s face.

That smile widened into something better called a smirk.

“I’m sorry to have alarmed you,” the Flame Alchemist continued, voice still light and idle and completely at odds with how intense his dark eyes were. “I imagine I’ll see you around.”

With that alarming statement and before Jean thought to salute, he was gone. And he seemed to have taken Jean’s breath, caught high and tight in his chest, with him.

 

O’Malley’s dance hall wasn’t usually Jean’s choice for an evening’s entertainment and companionship. The dancing was the best in the city, sure, but he had never been much of a dancer, and most of the time he was more interested in flirting with the big-breasted gals at the Clover. But _most_ of the time wasn’t the same as _all_ the time, and Jean wasn’t a complete stranger to O’Malley’s. Gerome at the door had waved him in with a wink and a friendly leer.

It had been almost two weeks since his strange encounter with the commander of 5th Battalion. It had left Jean itching and restless. He’d poked around, made a habit of asking after details whenever the newly mustered battalion or its commander came up in conversation. The Flame Alchemist’s name, it turned out, was Roy Mustang. Unlike many alchemists he had proper officer training, and they called him the Hero of Ishval. Jean had no idea what he’d done to earn that, but the rank and file of the 5th was mostly Ishval vets. Word had already spread that talking shit about Mustang around them was asking for a fist to the face.

But despite Jean’s nosing around, and despite Mustang’s parting words two weeks ago, Jean had yet to run into the man himself again. Which, well, the fact that he’d been going out of his way to avoid anyone above the rank of Major might have had something to do with that.

Jean had hoped the itch would leave him be after a visit or two to O’Malley’s. Usually some necking in a dark corner and hasty grope in an alley did just fine, and he could get back to being turned down by girls at Clover’s. Disappoint his mother only a little bit, instead of a lot. But none of the men in the crowd caught his eye last night and none were catching his eye tonight. Not for lack of Gerome trying, from his post over by the door.

Jean grimaced into his pint glass and downed the last of it. He slouched further back into the booth seat. The band kicked up a new tune, their liveliest one yet, and people tumbled out of the other booths and onto the dance floor. One man, with short dark hair and pouty lips, was dancing near the edge and making eyes at Jean, beckoning for him to join. He was soft, civilian, but he just might do.

Jean had just about decided to take up the invitation and join the dancer when he spotted a flurry of movement by the door. He glanced over and saw Gerome taking the coat of someone with pale blond hair - and beside Gerome, shrugging out of a long black coat, all done up in a tight waistcoat of dark tweed, was Lieutenant-Colonel Mustang. Jean froze.

He debated running, or at least fleeing to the stranger’s flirtatious company but he’d taken too long. When he looked back to the dance floor, the man had disappeared into the crowd. Jean looked back to Mustang and his friend. A buzz of anticipation, like the last moments before a gunfight, hummed through his bones. 

He watched them wade through the edge of the crowd. Mustang’s friend had a pretty face and wore trousers that hugged her hips nice and close, but Jean knew better than to moon over women who came to O'Malley's. He watched as the pair paused on the edge of the dance floor, exchanged a few words and - split. The woman headed straight for the bar, but Mustang watched the dancing for a moment before turning to look at the booths arrayed along the side of the room.

It was too late for a tactical retreat. A giddy, bubbly sort of feeling was working its way up the inside of his ribcage and he was pretty sure it wasn’t the beer. Mustang’s eyes locked on to his, as surely as if he’d known he’d be there, and Jean’s stomach pulled a backflip. He tried for a smirk, aping a confidence he didn’t quite feel and straightened from his slouch. When Mustang smiled back and started towards him, Jean's heart just about stopped. He clutched his glass and wished it had something left in it.

The closer Mustang got, the more aware Jean became of his own scruffiness. Mustang looked _sharp_ , all perfect tailoring and pressed edges. Glossy shoes gleamed in the lamplight and Jean shuffled his dull ones back under the bench. His civvies were too loose, having needed taking-in and hemming for months now, ever since he got back from the border, and his waistcoat and trousers were two slightly different shades of gray.

He was frantically dragging his brain for something to say as Mustang neared, something witty and charming and- 

And Mustang leaned on the bench back, looking like the very definition of “cat got the cream”, and drawled:

“You come here often?”

Jean couldn’t help it; he laughed.

“Really?” he said, grinning, “That's what you've got?”

“That's some of it,” Mustang said with a mischievous edge to his smile. He sat down and offered a handshake all in one smooth motion.

“Roy,” he said. Those dark eyes were still locked on Jean's and a thrill ran down his spine. It was like looking down the sights of a rifle and seeing a wildcat staring straight back at you.

Jean hesitated, a scrap of common sense and the weight of the disciplinary code staying his hand. But the man in front of him had been on his mind for days. And he wasn’t pulling rank, wasn’t mentioning Jean's… The giddy buzz had settled into his skull, and Jean could already feel heat growing between his legs.

He had left Mustang's - Roy's - handshake hanging for way longer than was polite but he was still holding his hand out, still watching and waiting with a smug look, as if he knew exactly what was going through Jean’s mind.

Yeah, fuck this guy. But also, damn, he'd _really_ like to fuck this guy.

Jean smirked back and clasped Roy’s hand.

“Jean,” he said. Then, because he saw no reason to waste time and his beer was gone anyway, he steeled himself and ran his thumb over one of Roy’s knuckles. “Fancy stepping out for a smoke?”

“I thought you'd never ask,” Roy damn near _purred_ and Jean could have sworn no one actually sounded like that off a cabaret stage. He laughed again and slid out from the booth.

“You got _any_ good lines?” he demanded.

Roy just grinned at him, still smug as all get out, and fell into step with him as they headed for the door. 

“They're working, aren't they?” he said into Jean’s ear as they pushed through the thronging crowd of dancers. There was no over-acted purr this time, just Roy's voice, low and warm. A shiver raced down his spine and the high breathlessness of his own laugh caught him by surprise. Yeah, Roy had a point there.

 

The light and laughter faded away as Jean sauntered around the corner of the side street into an alley. His heart was pounding and he felt flushed, skin too hot against the chilly edge to the night air. Roy had paused to say something to Gerome but before Jean could look back to see if he had caught up yet the click of shoes reached him and a warm, broad hand slid around Jean’s waist.

“I think we’ve gone far enough,” Roy said. His voice was low, murmured close enough that Jean felt the warmth of his breath on his neck. He paused to check if they were far enough down the alley that the street lamps’ light and the reek of the grocer’s dumpster wouldn’t reach. He turned and met Roy’s eyes.

“Yeah,” he rasped, cleared his throat and tried again, “Yeah, we’re good.”

“Better than good,” Roy whispered, pushing up into Jean’s space, one hand splaying against his chest before tracing a path up and around Jean’s neck. A thumb rasped against his stubble. Jean swallowed, hard enough that he felt the bob of his throat. He could feel the rise and fall of chest against chest. Those dark eyes were a deep, deep blue, Jean saw, not a dark brown as he had assumed. The hand on his neck nudged his head down as reached up-

And Roy paused, so close that his breath brushed Jean’s lips when he spoke.

“You can touch me, you know,” Roy said. Jean flushed. His hands, hovering awkwardly in the air beside them, came to rest on Roy’s hips. 

“Better,” was breathed against him, and then Roy was kissing him, fierce and demanding, as if life itself depended on it. Jean gasped into the kiss, clutched Roy tighter, and pushed back, met burning lips with his own, with a teasing glide of tongue. They kissed, and kissed, and Jean felt the pulsing heat of desire rising in his groin. Roy’s fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck, the hand on his hip pulled him closer. Jean gave over to that growing desire with a groan, and let his hands drop lower.

Roy Mustang, it turned out, had a _fantastic_ ass. Jean tightened his grip and pulled him in to seal the last inch of space between them. Roy inhaled, the sharp sound music to Jean’s ears.

“Fuck,” he gasped, chest heaving. Jean grinned down at him and pressed another quick, hard kiss to his lips. 

Looking down at Roy he wished, suddenly and fiercely, that they were somewhere else, somewhere with light, not tucked away in secret in the shadows. Roy staring up at him, eyes lidded and lips kiss-swollen, was entrancing. Jean yearned to know what that would look like in lamplight, firelight, daylight, anywhere other than hidden away in the shadows.

It was a foolish wish, for too many reasons, so he shoved it down behind a cocky grin and tilted his hips up to press the swell of his erection into Roy’s stomach. He tightened his grip, digging his fingers into the firm flesh of Roy’s ass.

“Y’like that?” he said. Roy grinned back and curled his own hands tighter, more possessive.

“Very much,” he said, and, “Don’t stop.”

So Jean held him tight and kissed him again.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean's a good soldier who has a deep and abiding respect for the Fuhrer's Regulations and Orders disciplinary code, really, he does. He swears. Honest to Amestris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *bows at the feet of SerendipitousOracle yet again* Shout-out to xem for wrangling all my goddamn wayward commas, capitals, em-dashes, and other abuses of the English language. Any remaining atrocities are entirely my own, I assure you.
> 
> Also I've handled a gun like 3 times in my whole life, so while I did some research, if I got anything egregiously wrong, please do let me know.

Breathe. In, out. Eyes on target. Breathe. In, out. He squeezed the trigger.

The bark of a rifle, the heavy kick of it back into his shoulder: it was never gonna get old, Jean was sure. He’d loved it when he was a kid, flushing pheasants from the bush with the dogs, and he loved it now. Laying the gun down on the table, he tossed the spent casings into the bin in the corner of the bunker and stood up, stretching. Another five for five, he was certain. Jean whistled tunelessly as he sauntered over to the spotter’s binoculars to peer downrange and check his accuracy.

As much as he missed his old platoon, getting regular access to East Area Base Prime and the best damn rifle range in all of Amestris was pretty sweet. Best part of being pulled into the Colonel’s HQ company, really. Walther hadn’t believed him, had laughingly suggested it was the pay, or not being out on district patrol and getting all the city girls. The pay increase had been next to nothing, though, and as for girls—well, hell, no _rifle_ had ever dumped Jean because he wore cheap cologne, or picked crappy seats at shows, or accidentally called her the wrong name. Twice. With a different name each time.

Nope, he wasn’t thinking about that. Jean scowled at the binoculars before stooping down to peer through. He was very definitely not thinking about anything to do with his sex life, love life, or lack of dates. That was half of why he’d bribed Garand into swapping time slots on the 500–800 meter range, after all. Cost him a pretty bit of coin, too. He shoved all thoughts of Missy (Krissy? _Dammit_ ) out of his mind and blinked, focusing through the binoculars. 

“Hah!” He grinned triumphantly. He’d need to wait for the confirmation from the rangemaster, of course, but from here it looked like a clean headshot on the hapless ceramic-mache target, a pretty 720-some meters downrange. At least he could still shoot, even when everything else was going to shit. 

He straightened back up to peer through the window with his naked eye, mulling over if he wanted to use up his last five shots, or call it a day on a high note. The hour wasn't quite up, but Mustang—the other half of why he’d swapped with Garand—still hadn’t shown. 

As if prompted by his thoughts, he heard the door unlatch with a soft _snick_ and swing open. He stiffened, a starburst of nerves erupting. And here he'd thought the man had chickened out.

Assuming it was—yep. A glance over his shoulder confirmed it: Colonel Roy Mustang. Until three months ago, a man Jean only ever saw out of uniform. Usually out of his clothes entirely, honestly. That had changed abruptly, when the newly minted Colonel became Jean’s CO. 

Jean took a deep, steadying breath, and turned around. Mustang’s face was unreadable, one of his small, polite smiles fixed on his face. He moved to lean against the wall near the door, all film-star slouch and folded arms.

“Don’t let me interrupt, Lieutenant,” he said, but Jean wasn’t fooled by the idle tone. If there was one thing he’d figured out in the past few months, it was that the man made an art out of not doing anything at all while still, somehow, getting a dozen things done. 

That he'd come at all was a surprise. Jean had figured the best his note would get was incinerated and ignored and, if he was lucky, no more demerits for insubordination added to his record. So if he was here, now, lounging with apparently idle ease… yeah, the bastard wanted something.

Or someone _._

Fuck it. Jean was taking those last five shots, and he was going to think about shooting and only shooting, and definitely not about the sour knot of nerves in his chest or not knowing what to do with his hands or feet or face when he was in the same room as Roy. 

He met Mustang’s eyes—he could do that now, though it had taken him a solid month to be able to around everyone else, without blushing and being dead certain the others just _knew_ —and weighed his next words. 

“Keep quiet, then,” he said curtly, biting his tongue to hold back the ‘sir’. Before he could second guess himself, he marched back over to his rifle and the shooting window. The very thorough check of his service rifle’s condition before loading it was largely unnecessary, but it gave him time to steady his breathing and refocus. 

The weight of the rifle in his hands, smooth and warm, always calmed him the way nothing else ever did. The day that stopped, Jean figured, would be the day he quit soldiering. Until then… he flattened himself down on his stomach and took another deep breath, looking through his sights. Six targets left on the range, three of them past 775 meters, bright spots of red and white. 

The rest of the room fell away, everything narrowing down to just the gun in his hands and the targets ahead of him. He couldn't quite shake his awareness of Mustang, the man’s presence an itch behind his shoulder blades. He ignored it as best he could, breathed. In. Out. _Fire._ Chamber another round.

As the echoing report of his fifth and final shot died away, Jean laid his rifle down and rolled over onto his back, staring up at the low grey ceiling of the bunker.

Soft clapping dragged his attention down, back to Mustang. Who… wasn’t where Jean had left him, but instead straightening up from the spotter’s binoculars. Huh.

“Impressive shooting,” he said mildly.

Jean squinted, doubt curdling venomously in his chest. “Right,” he said, “and how's it compare to the Hawk's Eye, huh? Still impressive then?”

That wiped the stupid, smarmy ‘I have never ever jerked you off in a back alley’ look off Roy’s face, at least. The wide-eyed bewilderment replacing it wasn't nearly as satisfying as Jean had imagined. Suddenly abashed, he looked away and rolled to his feet.

A tense silence draped the bunker. Jean shoved his hands into his pockets and looked anywhere but Roy, fighting the urge to pull out a cigarette.

“Is that what this is about?” Roy finally demanded. 

Jean shrugged. “Sort of,” he muttered, glaring at the spent casings bin.

Another horrible silence fell, and Jean closed his eyes, felt a bit like he might be sick. Fuck. If he didn't say it now— 

“You—”

“Why the hell'd you pick me?” He blurted the words out, bulling right through whatever Roy had been about to say. He spun around, desperate to see the reactions to his words. “What're you expecting, Roy? Am I just here in case you get a hard-on during a meeting, huh? In case you need a hand after a long day?”

Roy reeled backwards as if physically struck, eyes wide and face blanching.

“No! I- hell, Havoc, no! That’s not-” He paused and shut his eyes. Heart in throat, and dead certain that if he spoke again he’d throw up from nerves, Jean folded his arms and waited. 

Roy squared his shoulders and exhaled a long, shuddering breath, too loud in the small space, and opened his eyes. 

“That’s not why you were tapped, not at all. I—” Roy paused again, staring at Jean, brow furrowed into a deep frown. When he spoke again it was slower, hesitant. “—I hadn’t even thought that you… that you might think that.” His lips pressed together, thinning unhappily. “Of me.”

Jean fought back his first reaction, which was to laugh. He was pretty sure if he started laughing now, he’d just sound like a maniac. He swallowed, clenched his fists, spent a desperate few seconds wishing for his smokes, and then spoke only when he thought he had himself under control. His voice still hitched and quavered embarrassingly.

“You didn’t _think_? Of fucking _course_ I’d- what else was I supposed to think? I’m from 3rd, not your 5th, we’ve never had a damned fucking thing to do with each other in uniform, I’m not- I’m just—”a hand escaped his pocket to gesture wildly, attempting to sum up his entire, far from stellar, too loud, too insubordinate, too backwards-Eastern-hick, too much _not_ the perfect-fucking-soldier, career in the military so far, “—just, me,” he finished weakly and shoved his traitorous hand back into his pocket.

The 15 feet between them seemed both too close and too far, all at once. The rasp of the weird cloth of Roy’s gloves filled the silence. Even though Jean knew, technically, that those gloves were weapons and the sound meant sparks, it was kind of reassuring. Roy only did that, rubbed his fingers like that, when he was worrying over something. Hell. Jean closed his eyes. He shouldn’t _know_ that. He wished he didn’t know that. He wished he hadn’t been spending every possible second of the last three months soaking up every little thing Roy did. It was embarrassing, as if he was some school-kid with a crush.

“Do you want to know why?” Roy asked abruptly. Jean opened his eyes, but that wasn’t helpful at all. Roy’s face had smoothed out, gone back to mostly unreadable, just a faint frown and his intent gaze giving away his focus.

Jean swallowed. Did he? 

“... Yeah,” he said “Yeah, I really fucking would.”

Roy nodded, once, and as smart and stiff as if he was giving an official report, began to speak.

“You have three official reprimands and one demerit for insubordination on your record, and Kumar told me, privately, that you’d probably deserved more. Yet every single one is for a time when you spoke up either in defence of a soldier under your command or in response to an order that should not have been given.” 

Jean gaped, as stunned and winded as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. Roy still stood parade-ground precise, those dark eyes locked straight on to Jean’s. _That_ was why Mustang had wanted him in the district HQC? Jean’d been wrong, the man was just as mad as any other alchemist, real military training or not.

Roy didn’t give him a chance to reply, though, but continued on, picking up steam. 

“I like that,” he said, fierce and low, eyes blazing. “We—Amestris— _needs_ that. Soldiers with a conscience, soldiers with the guts to say no. And that was not the only reason.”

He paused there, expectantly.

“It wasn’t?” Jean managed to croak out. He didn’t know how, with that horse still kicking him in the chest. 

“No,” Roy said, moving towards Jean. “You have combat experience, _real_ experience, fighting other armies, not—” his face twisted in a brief spasm, “—Ishvalans. That’s valuable. You came up from the ranks, earned your stripes and your command in the field, not the academy. That—” He halted, a few feet away from Jean, still staring him in the eye, still not looking away. 

He dropped his voice down softer from the brisk, ringing declarations. “That is also valuable. And, yes, you are a very skilled sharpshooter, with experience in both wilderness recon and urban covert ops.” One corner of Roy’s mouth tugged up into a crooked smile. Jean’s heart—treacherous bastard—skipped a beat.

“I couldn’t let Armstrong steal _all_ of East’s sharpshooters, could I?” Roy said. 

It was, Jean decided dizzily, a good thing that Roy had stopped just beyond arm’s reach, because otherwise he just might have kissed him then. That would have been a terrible idea, probably. He felt a little bit like he was floating, seemed to have lost proper awareness of his feet and hands as all the blood in his body rushed to his face.

Roy was smiling now, properly, that smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made Jean want to push him up against the nearest surface and kiss him silly. _Dammit._

“Oh,” he squeaked out, voice cracking high, after it became obvious Roy wasn’t going to say anything more. That smile grew wider, closer to the delighted amusement he was used to seeing after Roy had pushed Jean up against the nearest surface and kissed _him_ silly.

Then it dropped away, and Roy looked serious once more, rolling his shoulders and clearing his throat.

“If I have given you any reason, any at all, to think otherwise, or been inappropriate or, ah, not… professional, I. Apologize.”

Jean snickered, then clapped a hand over his mouth, stifling his laughter. Roy, so suave when saying the most ridiculous shit, looked so damned uncomfortable. But laughing at an _apology_ was about the furthest thing from polite. Backwards Eastern hick or not, even Jean knew that.

A snort of laughter escaped. “Shit.” He rolled his eyes skyward, clamped his lips together and stared at the pitted cement ceiling, counting to ten as his shoulders shook.

“You haven’t,” he said, to the ceiling more than Roy. “You, uh, you really haven’t. That’s… that’s why I was confused, I guess.” He’d kept expecting something, anything, but Roy hadn’t even given him so much as a flirtatious glance, had kept the exact same distance from Jean that he kept from everyone else. Which, hell, maybe it was weird that Jean had been paying that close attention, but he’d been unbelievably on edge, that first month. 

Jean didn’t dare look back at Roy directly, so he looked down at his boots. His cheeks still felt like they were on fire.

“You, uh, you really mean all that?”

“Yes.” Roy’s reply was prompt, if a bit strangled. Shit, Jean really didn’t want to look at him. He was probably pissed as hell, and Jean was never gonna get laid ever again, unless the bartender at Clover’s finally took pity on him. (Or, well, if he showed up at Gerome’s door. He was pretty sure Gerome had a _thing_ for him, which was kind of weird, really, but damn, he gave _really_ good head.)

He exhaled, emptying his lungs of air, and then looked up. Roy was a bit pink, around the edges, but didn’t look murderous or anything. And was still standing just beyond arm’s reach. He attempted a smile.

“Well, that’s alright then!” Jean said. Then winced the obviously forced chumminess.

It was Roy’s turn to laugh, a tired sound, accompanied by a shake of his head.

“I really am sorry,” he said, ruefully. “I didn’t mean to confuse you, I just… well, I didn’t even realize that Jean Havoc was _you_ until I met with Kumar.”

Jean stared. “What?”

Roy shrugged. “I never asked your last name,” he pointed out. “And now you’re in my direct chain of command and, well, the regs are pretty clear on that.”

Jean snorted. “The regs also say that no officer of the Amestrisan Army ‘will be found in a bawdy house, gambling den, or other socially disgraceful place’.” 

He drawled the quote mockingly. Regulation 1304 was probably the most broken one in the whole code, but that didn’t stop the MPs from enforcing it with vicious fervour. “And we know what they think of places like, say, O’Malley’s.” 

Roy smiled wearily at that, finally releasing his hands from behind his back and sliding them into his pockets.

“It’s not really the same,” he said. “If we did anything, hell, if they even found out we had done anything, it could be…” He paused there, visibly searching for a word.

“Trouble?” Jean offered, the word falling heavier than he meant it to. Breaking 1304 was one thing, but the fraternization regs were on a whole other level. Getting caught on the wrong side of them, as Roy would definitely be as the ranking officer, would do more damage than simply stalling a promising career.

And it wasn’t like any of it would reflect well on Jean, either. It all sat like a stone in his throat.

“Trouble,” Roy agreed with a sigh. There was something in the way he was looking at Jean, something soft and tinged with regret, that made that stone even heavier.

Jean swallowed, turned away, and stepped up to the table his rifle lay on and began the rote, mindless habit of disassembling it. Through the open windows came the distant murmur of wind in trees, and even more distantly, voices drifting on that wind. For as much time as it took for Jean to strip down the rifle fully and pull out his cleaning kit, those faint sounds of a warm spring day were the only ones filling the bunker’s small room.

The scuff of Roy’s boots on the flagstones alerted Jean that he had company at the table. A gloved hand landed on the tabletop, just at the edge of his vision. Roy cleared his throat.

“I was almost very selfish,” he said quietly. “When I found out Lieutenant Havoc and Jean were the same person, I almost didn’t tap you. Just to keep you out from under my command. But what I said, about your qualifications… All of that, having you as a good soldier, a good officer, under my command, that was more important.” He paused, and Jean stilled his hands, clenched a fist around the oilrag he held. His heartbeat picked up, thumping towards racing.

“I don’t regret that, anyway. I know it’s only been a few months, but you’ve already proven yourself valuable.” Roy’s voice shook on the last words and Jean finally turned to look at him.

Roy was staring fixedly at the tabletop, lips pressed in a tight, white line, and blinking rapidly. Jean couldn’t stop himself from staring at the sight of this Roy he’d never seen before.

“You don’t regret that,” Jean said slowly, hardly daring to breathe, “but you do regret… something?”

Roy clenched his hands into fists and shut his eyes.

“Yes,” he said, so softly Jean could barely hear the word. Then, stronger, straightening up and opening his eyes as he turned to face Jean. 

“Yes,” he repeated, “I regret having to give up what we had. I know it wasn’t…”

He paused and licked his lips, and Jean instinctively glanced down, following that tempting flash of tongue.

“... anything serious, but it was good.” A small smile flickered over Roy’s face. “Better than anything else since the war, if I’m honest.”

Shit. Jean found himself at a loss as he met Roy’s eyes. His face was flushed hot all over again—damn his blondness anyway—and he was twisted all in knots, from the words on his tongue to the butterflies in his stomach. He’d set up this meeting out of desperation, not really expecting it to happen, and expecting only the worst even if it did. But Roy was only inches away from him, looking at him with a breathtakingly raw kind of honesty. All the more now that Jean had seen him in daily life, in his element, somewhere besides the shadows and lamplight of back alleys and cheap hotel rooms.

Roy’d mentioned his reprimands, the demerit for insubordination. And he’d clearly done some digging, if he thought he knew the details of each one, of why Jean had spoken up. Jean wondered, in that moment, if Roy thought that he’d made a calculated decision each time, or if he realized that all Jean ever did was get confused and overwhelmed, and then throw sense to the wind and listen to his gut.

He really hoped it was the latter, because otherwise he was about to catch Roy completely by surprise and he really didn’t want to be set on fire like the last poor bastard who had surprised the Flame Alchemist.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, and something flickered in Roy’s eyes, but Jean couldn’t hold back any longer. He leaned in, lifting his hand to curl behind Roy’s head.

Roy met him halfway, in a messy clash of teeth and lips and noses. Jean tangled his fingers in that silky black hair, readjusted, and then they were kissing. It was frantic, almost painful in urgency, and they only parted when they were out breath.

Panting, Jean rested his forehead against Roy’s, eyes still closed.

“We shouldn’t,” Roy whispered. His fingers were digging into Jean’s hips though, and he ran those quick, clever hands up Jean’s sides as he spoke.

“D’you want to?” Jean whispered back. 

He breathed. In. Out. Roy’s hands reached his shoulders, gripped tight. 

Breathe. In. Out.

“Yes,” Roy said, so Jean kissed him again.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They didn’t have the luxury of time, usually. Definitely didn’t when they were at work, as they were now, despite the hour. But Roy wasn’t saying anything, clearly willing to indulge Jean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're into the canon timeline! Chapter 4 of the manga, to be precise, which isn't in BH at all and got changed a lot in 03. It's right after the opening Liore stuff, though, if you aren't familiar. Manyest of thanks to the beloved SerendipitousOracle once again for the wrangling of commas and fixing the weird illegal things I do to sentence structure and compound words. <3 Any remaining oddities are on me.
> 
> Also, small CW for a brief dialogue mention of gross old man sexism, not from either of the boys, but if you're feeling particularly exhausted by the world, skip the paragraph starting with _"Apparently," Roy began_

Jean’s footsteps echoed eerily down the empty halls. Dim lighting left shadows pooling in the corners and turned entire stretches of corridor into yawning black voids. The faint buzz of electricity, the only other sound besides his boots on the concrete, crawled up his spine and sank into the base of his skull. With every corner he rounded and every empty hallway he passed, he tensed more, palms sweating. Every instinct screamed that he was alone, alone behind enemy lines. Get your gun out, Havoc, get your gun and muffle your footfalls, press up against the walls, round the corners muzzle first—he reached a T-junction and froze. To his left, the hallway was pitch black. Ahead and to the right, a single dim bulb flickered a dozen meters away.

“Shitfuckdamn,” Jean hissed, and dropped his hand to his service pistol. His mouth was dry, his heartbeat a pulsing thunder in his ears. This was stupid, this was so damn stupid. He was in East HQ, in the same halls he walked every single day. Nothing had changed, except that it was hours past finishing time for everyone except the graveyard shift.

“Don’t be a pansy, Havoc,” he snarled at himself, dredging up the memory of his first sergeant, bellowing insults and insulting encouragements in equal measure. He tightened his grip on the pistol, screwed his eyes shut, and wheeled right. Back to the darkness, don’t think about it, don’t think. One step left, so he wouldn’t hit the corner, two, four, six steps down the hall.

He opened his eyes. Dim lighting, grey walls, familiar doors. The single hall light was a few meters away and a bit beyond that, past the janitor’s closet, an office door with bright yellow light spilling out from under it. Jean’s grip on his pistol loosened. Huh. Someone was in the office still.

The shadows of Creta melted back into memories and plaster-and-concrete darkness as Jean picked up his pace. His money was on Hawkeye being the one still in. The train hijacking earlier had disrupted the usual mania of month-end Friday paperwork. He hoped it was Hawkeye, anyway. She wouldn’t care if he lolled around cleaning weapons with unnecessary diligence until she finished up. She wouldn’t ask any questions if he stayed until she was done, just so he could walk back through the halls with another person.

Jean eased the door open and peered in, looking towards Hawkeye’s desk. It was empty. Confused, he opened the door all the way and stepped through, letting his hand fall off his pistol as the warm yellow light washed over him.

His gaze skipped over the rows of desks and chairs straggling in the aisles. All empty, except for Jean’s chair where his coat and bag were dumped, just as Breda had said they would be. It wasn’t until he reached the far end of the room that he found the lone occupant: Roy Mustang, seated at the large desk at the head of the office.

The Colonel was stripped down to just his shirt-sleeves, his uniform coat and side holster tossed over the chair back. He was staring down at a minor catastrophe of papers, one bare hand propping up his head and the other tapping a pen with an irregular _tick-tick-ticktick_.

Jean let the door bang shut. Roy jolted upright, pen clattering across the desk. Jean grinned. 

“Thought you had a hot date tonight, boss!” he called out as he crossed the room, heading for his coat and bag, “What’re you still doing here?”

Roy slumped back in his chair, clutching his chest dramatically.

“Lieutenant!” he gasped, like a scandalized aunt. “Is that any way to enter a room?”

Jean snickered. Shit, Roy was in a mood. Must be from Fullmetal being back in town; the kid always got under Roy’s skin.

“It’s how I always enter a room,” he drawled, deliberately amping up his sheep-country accent. Reaching his desk, he cast a critical eye over the scattering of papers that the hasty exit earlier had left behind. Nothing that couldn’t keep, probably.

“You,” Roy informed him haughtily, “are a disgrace to the noble nation of Amestris.”

That didn’t sound like Roy’s usual dramatics. If anything, it was the peevish kind of mockery only ever inspired by the brass. Jean knew they weren’t planning to release Halcrow and his family from the hospital until Saturday. That was where he’d just come from, after all, checking on security protocols and guard shifts. But the chances that Halcrow had gotten his grubby hands on a phone and already called to give Mustang an earful? Pretty good, Jean wagered.

He checked to make sure his lunch tin had made it back into his bag and shrugged on his jacket before turning to face Roy. Who was still posturing in his seat like a two-bit actor, hand on his chest and nose in the air.

Not even bothering to try and hide his grin, Jean leaned a hip against his desk and asked, “I’m a disgrace because of how I close doors?”

“Because of how you slam doors like a _barbarian_ ,” was the lofty agreement.

“ _Only_ ‘cause of how I close doors?” Jean pressed, grinning wider. Roy, still turned away with nose in the air, hadn’t noticed yet.

“Primarily, yes,” was the immediate retort.

“Huh,” Jean said. He paused for a moment, debating his next moves. Then, mind made up and feeling a familiar nervous flutter in his stomach, he pushed his coattails back and tucked his thumbs into his belt loops. He pulled the baggy uniform trousers as snug as he could, flattening his fingers against his thighs.

With a very different kind of drawl, voice just loud enough for Roy to hear him, he said, “And here I thought it might be me fucking my CO.”

There was a long pause. Then chair legs hit the floor with a thump and Roy sat up. He leaned forward, fingers steepled in front of his face, as intent on Jean as a wolf with its prey. A bolt of arousal shot through Jean, bright as lightning.

“Well,” Roy said, his voice dropped to a low purr, “I’d hardly call that disgraceful, considering your… performance.”

The eyebrow waggle was what did Jean in, really. Even after years of this back-and-forth, he still couldn’t hold out in the face of Roy’s flirting. Laughing helplessly, Jean dropped his own provocative pose and sauntered towards Roy’s desk.

“I don’t know how you can say shit like that without even blinking,” he complained. Roy smirked and stood up, coming around the front of the desk to meet him.

“Practice,” he said, sweeping a burning, possessive look up and down Jean. A shiver raced down Jean’s spine.

“Shameless bastard,” Jean said, coming to a stop barely a hand’s breadth from Roy. He looked good, like this. Roy always looked good, really, but this was different from his usual polish and poise. Sleeves pushed up, top buttons of his shirt undone, hair truly messy for once, as if he’d been running his hands through it. There was even the faint black shadow of stubble along the angle of his jaw. Jean drank it all in, letting his eyes linger on the tight press of suspenders against that solid chest.

They didn’t have the luxury of time, usually. Definitely didn’t when they were at work, as they were now, despite the hour. But Roy wasn’t saying anything, clearly willing to indulge Jean. Or to indulge himself, as it turned out. When Jean finally looked back up at Roy’s face, his eyes were lingering somewhere around Jean’s chest and shoulders.

Jean cleared his throat. Roy looked up, an eyebrow lifted in inquiry.

“Seriously, didn’t you have a date tonight?” Jean asked.

Roy grimaced. “I did, but as you can see…” He tilted his head at the mounds of paperwork on the desk behind him.

“That sucks,” Jean said, because yeah, spending Friday night doing paperwork was never his idea of a good time. He couldn’t help but feel a bit of selfish relief though, that the date was cancelled. Friday night dates were real ones, mostly. He knew it was stupid. It wasn’t as if they could go out on dates together. But it was two months of rejections since Jean’s last date with a girl and sure, he tries, he knew it was still what everyone expected and his family wanted but—well, shit, now he was getting all tangled up in a weird knot of emotion in his chest and Roy was still looking at him, expectantly.

Jean searched for something to say and then blurted it out before he could think twice.

“You couldn’t get Hawkeye to do it?”

Roy scowled. “ _No,_ ” he snapped, and Jean stepped back, alarmed. “It’s not actually her job to—”

He cut himself off and pinched the bridge of his nose. Jean waited, wary. He’d been on the end of a dressing down from Mustang before and hoped that wasn’t what was coming next.

“Sorry,” Roy muttered. Relief flooded through Jean and his shoulders dropped, releasing tension he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.

“Halcrow?” Jean guessed, and got a weary nod in reply.

“Apparently,” Roy began sourly, face already twisting in disgust, “I only keep Hawkeye around for her to do all my work for me and because she’d ‘look good on her knees’. You’d think a _family man_ —” Roy sneered the words, eyes flashing with anger— “would have some kind of decency—”

He cut himself off again and met Jean’s eyes with a glare. Jean knew the anger was for Halcrow, but the shiver that intense focus sent down his spine was not a good one.

“Old man’s an asshole, always has been,” Jean said, cautiously. He didn’t really want to get Roy riled up, as sympathetic as he was. He respected the hell out of Hawkeye, sure, but Roy in a temper was frightening.

“Kinder words than I’d use,” Roy said. The anger held for a moment longer, then he deflated. Roy sighed heavily and slumped down to perch on the edge of the desk. He scrubbed a hand over his face then looked at Jean with a strange look in his eyes.

“Do _you_ have a date?” he asked. Jean laughed and stepped back in, close enough for their knees to brush. All the lights were behind Jean from here, casting the dips and angles of Roy’s face into warm golden shadows.

“Nah,” he said. “No one’s caught my eye in a while.”

Roy leaned back, resting his weight on his hands, and looked up at Jean. It struck Jean all over again that Roy really was not a very _large_ man. He had such a presence it was easy to forget. Without the bulk of the uniform or the billow of his overcoat his shoulders were narrower and waist trimmer. The strange look from earlier was gone, wiped away by a smooth, polite blankness.

“No one? What about the new girl at the switchboard? Whatshername… Celeny?” Roy asked. He sounded so light and curious, for all the world as if the answer meant absolutely nothing to him one way or the other. Something twisted in Jean’s chest.

He knew who Roy meant. She was, or should have been, right up Jean’s alley. She had long, dark hair and a bright smile and curves for days.

“Not new, she’s been here for four months now,” he pointed out, somehow getting the words out normally past the lump in his throat. “I took her out about two months back, too.”

It hadn’t worked out, which wasn’t as much of a surprise as Jean might have liked. At least it hadn’t been the usual story of the woman turning him down, though. Celeny had been a fun, cheerful date, had seemed like she might really be into him. But when she’d cornered him a few days after to coyly fish for a second date, Jean had said no.

“Really?” Roy looked bemused. Surprised at his own ignorance, probably. Jean was surprised too, really. Sometimes it seemed like Roy knew what was happening in his office team’s lives before they did.

“Yeah,” Jean said. He shoved Celeny, and the memory of her bright red lips, out of his mind and nudged Roy’s knees apart. He ran a hand along the outside of Roy’s thigh.

Roy smiled a small, warm smile up at him and pressed his thigh back into Jean’s hand.

“I really have to get this done,” he murmured, but he was staring at Jean’s lips.

“Yeah?” Jean repeated. He skimmed both hands up Roy’s thighs and leaned in closer. Watched as Roy’s chest heaved out, and in. “Seems like you’re working real hard.”

He paused, giving Roy a final chance to back up or push him away. They hadn’t been this close in weeks and that was the only reason Jean was even risking this. Because dammit all, he missed Roy.

Roy wet his lips. Jean’s breath caught in his throat.

“Door’s closed, yeah?” He breathed the question, more than spoke it. Roy glanced over his shoulder.

“Yes,” he murmured and tilted his head, looked up at Jean from beneath heavy lids and long, dark lashes. “Planning to do something disgraceful, are you?”

Jean stifled a groan, the soft warmth of arousal unfurling in his belly. He ran his hands higher up Roy’s thighs, whispered ‘Sure am’, and kissed him.

It was warm and soft, with just the lightest scratch of stubble, and for a handful of blissful seconds, perfect. 

Then the office door crashed open, slamming against the wall. Jean’s heart leapt into his throat riding a surge of pure adrenaline and he flung himself backwards, away from Roy, away from anything that could look anywhere near compromising. He tripped over his heels, scrambled upright, and shoved his hands into his pockets, desperately trying to remember what a casual conversational distance looked like.

Roy, the bastard, barely moved an inch. He straightened up enough to not look entirely debauched, but stayed perched on the front edge of his desk. The heated look was gone, buried under that smooth, polite mask.

An off-kilter thump _thunk_ penetrated the fog of lust and fear and Jean looked over his shoulder to see—huh. Golden-blond hair, a bright red coat, and a fierce scowl: Ed Elric. The kid was stalking down the office aisle, headed straight for them. There was no seven-foot tall suit of armour trailing behind him, which was… strange.

Jean swallowed nervously and wondered if Ed was old enough to know what it looked like when people had just been kissing. He did his damned best impression of a wooden post, hoping he didn’t look half as flushed as he felt, and Ed stalked on by, not even glancing at him. Despite that, Jean still felt like he had ‘I was just kissing Roy Mustang’ painted in red lipstick all over him.

Roy folded his arms and watched Ed’s approach, unmoving.

“Fullmetal,” he said as Ed halted in front of him. “Still abusing doors I see.”

“Fuck off, Mustang,” Ed snapped. Roy’s eyebrow twitched. Ed thrust a thin sheaf of papers out to him. Still nothing from the boy about anything he may or may not have seen and Jean felt his racing heart slow with each passing second.

“Report for you,” Ed muttered, giving the papers a shake when Roy didn’t immediately reach for them.

“A report. For me,” Roy repeated slowly. Jean stifled a snigger. Roy was looking at the papers as if Ed were offering him venomous snakes instead, arms still folded.

“What are you, dense?” Ed demanded. “Yeah, for you.”

Finally, with reluctance dripping from every inch of movement, Roy reached out and tugged them from Ed’s grip with delicately pinched thumb and forefinger.

“And to what do I owe this honour?” Roy asked, still eyeing the papers mistrustfully. 

Ed rolled his eyes. “Your district, isn’t it? Your district, your problem, and Halcrow’s a jackass that I’m not fucking getting up before noon tomorrow for. So. Report.”

Roy kept staring at him, and the boy shuffled in place. He crossed his arms, uncrossed and recrossed them before finally shoving his hands into pockets.

“What?” he said, every inch the sulky teenager. Jean had a moment of dizziness, remembering sniping at his school headmistress in that exact same tone.

“Who are you and what have you done with Edward Elric?” was Roy’s response, because of course it was, because Roy was an idiot and went around poking lions with sticks.

“Oh fuck you, Mustang!” Ed predictably bristled, the lion swatting at the stick. “I know how to do my damn job!”

“It took _six weeks_ to get a report from you the last time you were involved in a situation in my—”

“I was fucking _thirteen,_ jackass!”

“Oh, and you’ve grown _so much_ —!”

“Alright! Alright, break it up you two!” Jean was an idiot too, it turned out, because he was now standing right in between two of the most powerful alchemists in Amestris. He had one hand braced on Ed’s shoulder, the other stretched out towards Roy to stop him.

Miraculously, they both shut up. Ed wrenched his shoulder back and subsided with an irritated grumble. Roy huffed and sat back down, tossing the report on one of the stacks behind him. Jean shot him a warning glare. He had better stay sat down and shut up, the idiot.

“That’s good thinking,” he said to Ed. “You’re lucky any of us were still in at this hour, though. Shouldn’t you be getting on to bed? Bet you’ve had a long fuc- a long day.”

Ed gave him one of those looks, the ones that just screamed ‘I know what you’re doing and I don’t like it’. Jean just grinned through it, hoping to high heavens that Ed would just take his really-not-subtle-at-all hint and leave. After standing and glaring at Jean just long enough to be stubborn, Ed turned and stalked back to the door. Jean slumped in relief.

Ed opened the door much more gently this time, but as he turned to shut it behind him, he paused and looked back down the length of the office. It was hard to tell from this distance, but Jean could have sworn the kid looked a bit pink in the face.

“Hey, Mustang!”

Roy, who was sulking almost as obviously as the teenager, looked up.

“Yes?”

“Your hair’s stupid,” Ed blurted and then slammed the door behind him.

The echoing silence left in Ed’s wake was broken by Roy, who sounded completely bewildered.

“My… hair is stupid?”

Jean laughed at him. Roy glared and Jean subsided with a chuckle.

“Yeah,” he said with a grin, “it’s kind of a mess.”

“It—oh, for the love of—” Roy huffed and combed his fingers through it, trying to flatten it back down.

“Hey, hey now!” Jean strode forward and caught one of Roy’s wrists. An irritated scowl answered him.

“I thought you said—”

“It’s not a _bad_ thing,” Jean cut him off and Roy paused, squinting up at him suspiciously. “I like it, anyway.”

The suspicious look didn’t fade until Jean reached up and ruffled Roy’s hair, sending it every which way again. Roy jerked his head away, but a smile was chasing the suspicion away.

“Hey!”

Jean grinned at him and shifted his grip on Roy’s wrist to lace their fingers together. Roy squeezed Jean’s hand and cast a last despairing look at the door. 

“I do not understand that boy at all,” he said with a heavy sigh.

“Reckon he saw anything?” Jean asked. He tried for casual but the words came out a little too high, a little too nervous for that. Roy looked up at him, those keen eyes studying him intently. He could see the blue in them, for once, Jean was pleased to realize.

A small smile quirked the corner of Roy’s mouth and he squeezed Jean’s hand again.

“I doubt he would have missed out on an opportunity to yell at me about it, so no, I don’t think he did.”

Yeah, that made sense. Jean had never thought he’d be grateful for Roy having some sort of weird ongoing feud with Ed, but here they were.

A bubble of comfortable silence settled around them. Roy’s hand was cool in his but comfortable, a familiar weight. He sort of wanted to kiss him again (sort of always wanted to kiss him, really) but didn’t quite dare, so he stood and looked down at Roy looking up at him. There were dark shadows below Roy’s eyes, he saw, and faint lines creasing the corners. The stubble really did edge just along the jawline; it barely crept up Roy’s cheeks at all. 

Part of him thought this should be awkward, standing here like this. Holding hands and, shit, pretty much doing that whole romantic ‘gaze into your lover’s eyes’ thing. If he was doing this with a girl, he’d feel like a right tit, Jean was sure. And it probably should have felt more awkward with Roy but it didn’t, at all, and a bigger part of him whispered that he’d be pretty happy to do more of this. To maybe never stop.

Roy sighed again and tugged his hand free.

“I really do have to get this done, Jean,” he said, soft and regretful.

Jean sighed too, at that, and stepped aside to lean against the desk. Yeah, he knew that. He had sworn to himself a long time ago that he wouldn’t become the thing that held Roy back. If they were going to do this (crazy, stupid, career-endingly-mad) thing, he wouldn’t distract Roy at work. He really wasn’t the best at keeping promises, even to himself. The kissing had been foolish. He should just take that and leave.

He thought about that, about grabbing his bag and heading out the door and back into the long, dark stretches of empty hallways. The maze of familiar-turned-strange that sent him right back to Creta and floors that exploded beneath your feet and collapsing walls and dying soldiers. Even just thinking about it, about the gauntlet he’d have to run with his own fucking mind just to get out the front door, had tension crawling up his shoulders and digging spikes into the back of his neck, into his throat.

Jean was reaching for his smokes before he was even conscious of it, flipping the top open and fishing out a single stick with a hand that thankfully only shook a little.

He knew Roy usually only smoked when he drank, but he offered the pack anyway, just in case. Roy shook his head but made no move to stop Jean when he switched carton for lighter and lit up. He took one drag, then two, barely feeling them over the weight of Roy’s eyes on him.

Jean watched the smoke drift upwards, held the cigarette in front of him and watched the ember burn back, paper curling and blackening. When his hand finally stopped trembling he went to tap the ashes from the end. Only then did he realize he was nowhere near an ashtray.

“Shit,” he muttered. There was a soft huff of laughter next to him and then Roy leaned over, a mostly-empty tea mug held out. Jean flicked the ash in carefully. Getting ashes on the floor was a sure way to earn janitorial ire and Jean was in bad enough with them already.

Roy set the mug down on the desk between them, nudging a stack of papers aside. Jean exhaled another plume of smoke and weighed his options. As the grey cloud dissipated, he spoke.

“I’ll wait for you,” he said.

“There’s no need for that,” was Roy’s immediate response. Jean looked sideways. Roy was still watching him, but he didn’t look annoyed. Concerned, maybe, if Jean had to put a word to the tightness around his mouth and the pinch of his brow.

Jean shrugged. “I want to,” he said. Then he thought of old man Halcrow and the mess that getting all the Blue Squad into lock-up and fighting with the stationmaster to increase security at the train station had been.

“‘Sides,” he added, “Ed had the right idea. I’ll get my report written up, while you do your shit, and then…”

He trailed off and took another drag, staring fixedly at the swirls and eddies of the smoke. He would really like to take Roy home, or go home with him, but they didn’t often really… just out and ask that. Casual questions and subtle inquiries to determine if the other was interested and available, and then meetings arranged with the same subtlety and codewords they used for covert ops far more military in nature.

Jean twisted to tap more ash into the mug. Roy caught his wrist. He looked up to find Roy studying Jean intently, serious and still. Whatever he found he must have liked because he smiled and let go.

“Alright,” Roy said, though Jean wasn’t entirely sure what he was agreeing to. “But one condition.”

Jean raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

The look Roy gave him, dragging his gaze down Jean’s body, left nothing in doubt.

“Kiss me like that again,” he said, “before we leave.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you might guess from us now being into canon, shit is about to rapidly hit the fan for both Roy and Jean. :P I titled this with 'love story' in the title, though, and as far as I'm concerned that's a promise of a happy ending.
> 
> Also, fun author fact: I've been thinking of this chapter as the Interrupting Ed chapter ever since the first draft and honestly, the main reason I didn't title my chapters is because I knew I wouldn't be able to think of _any other name_ for this one and that'd ruin half the fun. XD


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've been stuck in their pattern for years, now, and Jean's got no reason to expect things to change. Until they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags updated, including adding a 'smoking' one, partly as a heads up in case you're a smoker who's trying to quit or something ('cause Jean's fully indulging). And we're well into the canon timeline now so, yup, this chapter and the next are Rough. Happier note tho, spot the '03 reference. :P

It was well past midnight when Jean collapsed into bed. Despite the exhaustion baked into his bones, sleep was elusive. He tossed and turned, mind whirling, nerves raw from days of digging through rubble after a man who took down State Alchemists like they were nothing and _might_ still be alive. Just as he thought he was drifting off, he would catch a glimpse of the looming shadow of the bureau or hear the buzz and snap of alchemy in the rattle of wind against the building. He didn’t know exactly when he finally fell asleep, but his last coherent thought was, yet again, _thank the fates for Riza Hawkeye_.

The scrape and thud of shovels on stone echoed through a bewildering, stressful dream involving haunted warehouses and misplaced skeletons long before it turned into the banging of a fist on a wooden door. Jean jerked awake, panting and sweaty. He laid there on his back, legs tangled uncomfortably in the sheets, mind floating groggily up out of the dream. Just as he had about convinced himself he’d been hearing things, it came again: knocking, ragged and without rhythm. Jean thought about not moving, about letting whoever it was knock until they gave up, but then he lolled his head to the side and squinted out the window.

It was still pitch dark, save for the street lamps, with no hint of dawn anywhere near. His heart rate, just starting to slow down from the creeping dream-dread, picked back up. Jean struggled free of the sheets and stumbled out of his bedroom. He found the chain for the hall light and tugged it sharply, squinting against the harsh glare of electric lighting. Fire hazard be damned, he really missed oil lamps and candles this time of night.

The knocking came again, quieter this time, as if the knocker was giving up. 

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Jean grumbled. The security chain stuck, as it always did, and he yanked it free with a soft curse. Who the fuck was at his door at this hour?

The lights in the building hall were even brighter than the single bulb and it took a couple seconds for his eyes to focus, watering in the light. When they did, he had to rub them and take another look before he could believe what he was seeing.

Swaying slightly on his feet, with a sickly flush on his cheeks and puffy, red-rimmed eyes, was Roy. His long black overcoat was buttoned crookedly and underneath that, his uniform a rumpled disaster. He reeked of booze.

“The hell, Roy?” Jean demanded, reaching for him. Roy swayed back, out of reach, and found his voice.

“Jean?” He sounded lost, his voice weak and hoarse. “I want...”

His face twisted and he staggered forwards, practically bowling Jean off his feet as he collapsed into him.

Clumsy arms wrapped around Jean, clutching at the back of the grubby old t-shirt he had worn to bed, and a cold nose buried itself in the crook of his nose. Jean caught Roy and darted a look up and down the hall. No other doors were open, but that didn’t mean no one was at their peepholes. 

“Fucking shit,” Jean muttered. Roy seemed to have given up on supporting his own weight, draped over Jean. Carefully, Jean shuffled them around so he could reach his door and shut it, blocking the sight of their embrace from any possibly prying eyes.

With Roy hanging off of him, the sticky, sour stench of cheap booze was overpowering. Jean felt his gorge rise and swallowed viciously, rolling his eyes to the ceiling and counting to ten. Then he slid his arms beneath Roy’s and heaved him up further, trying to take some of the weight across his shoulders.

“Roy, hey, buddy, c’mon. Walk for me, just a bit.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy said, or something very like it, groaned into Jean’s neck. A cold snake of dread settled into Jean's gut.

“Sure,” Jean said uneasily, “sure you are. C'mon, I can't carry you.” 

“ ‘m sorry,” was slurred again, and the grip on Jean's shirt tightened, Roy twisting in Jean’s arms as he tried to find his feet.

“Sorry. I shouldn't’ve come ‘ere,” Roy mumbled. Jean felt lips moving, breath puffing hot against the soft skin of his neck. A shiver ran down his spine, chasing a spark of arousal. Jean grit his teeth and rolled his eyes. _Not the time, Havoc,_ he scolded himself.

He patted Roy's back and hoisted him higher.

“Hey now, it's alright, it’s alright,” he soothed, skin still prickling uneasily. Jean couldn't think of a time he'd ever heard Roy apologize. “Just, stand up for me, would you?”

Roy groaned, and hauled his feet back under himself, still clinging tight to Jean. Upright, he couldn’t keep his face buried in Jean's shoulder, but he was still hunched over, eyes downcast and face turned away, close enough their cheeks almost brushed.

Jean fought back another reflexive gag at the sour stink of liquor and started the slow, awkward shuffle through the apartment, heading for the sofa. They almost tripped over Jean’s boots, then his bag, and Jean cursed himself for not picking up better. His mother’d be ashamed.

They made it to the sofa, but when Jean tried to nudge Roy to sit, Roy's grip tightened and his forehead dropped onto Jean’s shoulder. He pressed in close, plastering himself against Jean from head to toe. Startled, Jean froze. The last time they had been this close, he realized dizzily, they had both been naked. He didn't know what to do with a fully-clothed Roy embracing him so desperately.

Hesitantly, he folded his arms around Roy’s back, tightening his grip so he could feel the curve of muscle and hard plane of shoulder blade beneath the layers of coats. 

“Sorry,” Roy whispered again, “I’m—”

He broke off with a gasp, a choked wet inhale, and pressed in further. His shoulders began to quake. A tremor rattled Roy, then another, followed by wet, gasping sobs.

Jean stiffened. Fear burnt cold through him.

“Uh, Roy? Roy, what—” his voice cracked high.

“Shit,” Roy gasped, audibly fighting the tears, “shit, shit, sh—”

He choked on a half-strangled sob and Jean—he didn't know what to do. If this was his mother, he would know how to hold her, how to comfort her. If this was Breda, or one of the guys, he’d pat their back awkwardly, hug them just tight enough to show he cared, then make his escape. But this was Roy. And what the hell was Roy, to him? 

His CO, for one, not one of the guys, not just another soldier. Everything else aside, Jean had figured out years ago that he'd follow Mustang through hell and high water alike. But he was Roy, too. Had been Roy, first. Dark eyes and bad pick-up lines and some of the best damn sex Jean's ever had. That’s where it had started, but, hell. He and Roy, they'd been doing whatever this was for years now but—it wasn’t as if it was even real regular. Not as if they’d ever put words to it, really.

Jean was aware that, even as his thoughts raced down winding paths of excuses, that was what they were: excuses. Reasons he was desperately grabbing for, trying to explain away wanting to hold Roy close, to rub circles into his shoulders and press kisses into his hair. The kinds of things _couples_ did. 

Roy shuddered in his arms and Jean closed his eyes. He could feel a wet patch on his shoulder where Roy's tears had soaked through. He still told his mother that sure, he wanted to settle down with a nice girl some day, maybe someday soon. But part of him, a part growing month by month, year by year, just wanted—

Wanted what? To follow after Roy, in his rise to the top? To devote himself to Roy’s cause, and still hold him close at night? He couldn’t have both. He was a fool, a damned fucking fool. Even if he did want that, even if he did want to take Roy to bed right now, not to fuck but to hold him close as he cried—and he didn’t, damn it, he didn’t, he just—

Jean never had been very good at telling lies.

Jean opened his eyes, half expecting the dim shadows of his apartment to have changed. Nothing had. Roy was still shuddering in his arms, body wracked in spasms as he fought each and every sob. The half-dead plant on his balcony still swayed slightly in the night breeze.

Jean inhaled shakily, exhaled a bit steadier. Longed for a cigarette. Let himself run one hand up and down Roy's back, a single sweep. He let himself press his cheek, briefly, to the crown of Roy's head, and then turn press lips to hair in the briefest, softest of kisses.

Then he cleared his throat, loosened his grip, and reached up to try and prise Roy off of him.

“Hey,” he said, softly. “Hey, Roy, c'mon. Sit down, yeah? Have a seat, just behind you there, I'll get you some water.”

 

Jean woke as usual, a solid hour before his alarm. The faint light of dawn filtered in through the window, painting stripey shadows over the walls and furniture. He blinked groggily at the ceiling, struggling to think past the jittering metallic burn of _need_ for his smokes. Something felt off, a niggling gap in his memory.

_Roy._

He bolted upright, fumbling for slippers and groping about his nightstand blindly. The cigarettes and lighter were found more by muscle memory than sight. Knuckling the sleep from his eyes, Jean shuffled out of his bedroom far more quietly than usual. 

Roy, however, was already awake. He sat at the tiny table near the balcony door, back turned to Jean. The soft grey light backlit him, turning him into a round-shouldered silhouette. The same wool blanket Jean had left him sleeping under last night was draped over his shoulders. Jean paused, pack half-open in his hands. A swell of emotion, something warmer and softer than Jean was used to with Roy, rose up in him.

Jean coughed, the rough deep hacking he always woke up with, and continued forward. He didn’t know how to deal with this, with whatever had brought Roy piss-drunk and distraught to his doorstep last night. Whatever it was could wait until he could damn well _think_ again, though. He fumbled a cigarette out of the pack and dropped the pack on the table as he eased the door open. He didn’t look at Roy, and Roy didn’t stir.

Just the papery taste and musty tobacco scent of the cigarette calmed his jittering as he placed it between his lips. His hands shook, as they always did in the morning before his first smoke, but he flicked the lighter open, watched the small yellow flame catch and glow, paper blackening, edges curling. Inhaled, the taste of smoke on the back of his tongue, eyes closed and face tilted up into the chilly morning mist off the river. Exhaled.

The mist would burn off soon, Jean knew, the eastern desert sun cresting over the far hills, hot and bright. He only really got up this early to smoke, and often fell right back into bed after, but a part of him loved these moments between night and day when the city was so still, draped all in white and grey.

He smoked the first cigarette down to the butt, only stubbing it out when the ember threatened to scorch his lips. Standing up from his slouch against the door frame, he rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and reached back to the table for his pack and a second cigarette.

Roy, so silent that Jean had almost forgotten his presence, stirred.

“Jean,” he said, voice scratchy and tired, “I... about last night.”

Of course, Roy couldn’t leave well enough alone, Jean thought, half in despair. Couldn’t just let it fade into silence, couldn’t just pretend nothing had ever happened, that there was anything strange about him being here, in the quiet of the early morning. 

(He’d never stayed the night before, and yet here he was.)

Jean lit the second cigarette and took two good drags to fortify himself, trying to figure out what to say.

“If you say sorry again, Mustang, I’m gonna…” He trailed off with a shake of his head. He’d been going to say, jokingly, that he’d hit him, knock some sense back into him. But the sight of Roy, ghost-pale and small, bundled up in the blanket Jean’s mother had knit, held him back.

His implied threat drew a weak smile to Roy’s lips, at least. He chuckled, a short, hoarse sound.

“‘Mustang’, Jean, really?”

Jean flushed, embarrassed. He turned back to stare out over the clothes-line webbed cityscape and lifted the cigarette back to his lips.

“Why’d you even come here? And right from HQ, too?” he asked finally, when the silence dragged on. Last night, as he’d wrangled an unhelpfully limp Roy out of his uniform, he’d been puzzling over that. Roy had shown up at his door unexpectedly before, but never in uniform. And never drunk.

Roy sighed. “Would you believe me if I said I don’t remember?”

Jean laughed softly. “Yeah, sure would. You were a mess.”

When he turned to smirk at Roy, though, there was no humour in Roy’s face. His eyes, red and tired, ringed in dark circles, seemed to look right through Jean, staring unseeing into some distance.

“I wish I didn’t remember,” Roy whispered.

Fear soured in Jean’s stomach and on his lips. He lowered the cigarette.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

The grief in Roy’s eyes when he finally focused and met Jean’s gaze took his breath away.

“Maes was murdered,” he said, still in a hoarse whisper. “Maes, Hughes, he was—he was calling me, again, and he—there was a gunshot. I heard it. I heard—I couldn’t—”

Roy’s face twisted and Jean was moving before he really even knew it. The cigarette was abandoned still burning in the ashtray, and then Jean was wrapping his arms around Roy’s shoulders, carding his fingers through Roy’s hair as Roy buried his face in Jean’s chest. A single hand clutched at Jean’s shirt. Roy gasped, short and sharp and wet, but no tears came. It was not followed by the wrenching sobs of the night before.

“Shit,” Roy gasped. Then, more viciously, “ _Fuck_. He was—he was my best fucking friend, Jean.”

Grief was a knot in Jean’s own throat, now, and he blinked fiercely, fighting back tears. He could pictures Hughes’ smiling face, clear as day, could see that way he smiled when he was teasing Roy. He’d never known Hughes very well, but he’d kind of always wanted to.

“He was my best—I loved him!” Roy’s voice was rising now, shaking and pleading, the words spilling out of him in a rush, a flood, “And he’s gone. He’s gone and I couldn’t do any—”

Roy pulled back, so abruptly Jean nearly fell over. He grabbed at Jean’s arms, clutched him tight and stared up at him. His eyes, glassy with unshed tears, searched Jean’s face earnestly for what Jean didn’t know.

“I needed… I needed to be near you, I think,” Roy said, low and quiet, but firm now. As easily as if he wasn’t confessing something that sent confusion ricocheting through Jean.

He swallowed past the dryness in his mouth and regretted ditching that second cigarette.

“I’m sure, uh, anyone could’ve… helped,” he offered. Roy smiled crookedly, then dropped his head to rest against Jean’s chest again. On Jean’s back, his fist finally unclenched and smoothed out the wrinkled fabric, his palm a warm and steady pressure.

“Maybe,” Roy said quietly, “but it was you I wanted.”

Jean closed his eyes, pressed his lips shut to keep himself from blurting out something stupid. He didn’t know what to do with that. What was Roy expecting? What was he meant to say? What _could_ he say? Everything he’d thought last night—about them, about the necessary secrecy and the limits—it all still held true.

A hand caught his chin and pulled down gently. Jean followed the pressure down and opened his eyes. The glassiness in Roy’s eyes had faded some, though weariness was still etched into every line and crease and curve of his face. He was looking at Jean, really looking, with every bit of focus.

“I’m sorry,” Roy said quietly. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“What’d I say about apologizing?” Jean demanded. The roughness in his own voice surprised him. Roy’s hand curved up around his jaw, traced a line over his cheek. Jean leaned, ever so slightly, into that familiar warmth. Roy’s thumb rubbed over his rough morning stubble.

“I’m not really sure,” Roy said. “You weren’t very precise.”

If Jean’s laugh sounded more like a sob of his own, neither of them mentioned it. He raised his own hand to cover Roy’s.

“Idiot,” he rasped, and bent forward to kiss him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please send love and happy thoughts to my beta SerendipitousOracle, btw, they are Sick and Poorly this week but still found the time and energy to wrangle my grammar-mangling into order and tame some of the wilder Questionable Clauses.
> 
> They also provided this excellent note, which I'm still cackling about: "already established thumb in cheektown, and presumably not traveling to stubble elsewhere"
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading and for the kudos, btw! ~<3


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't so much that he'd forgotten the risks he took every time he strapped on combat gear, but it turned out that yeah, Jean'd never really expected it to happen to him. He'd been shot at, beaten up, broken bones. But never... this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, after the last chapter, you all may have guessed just what might be coming up next. :P 
> 
> Tags have been updated once again, and content warning for hospitalization and slightly-milder-than-canon levels of gore.

Pain screamed up through his stomach and chest, arced down his back and into his legs. He hung there, a worm on a hook. There was a roaring in his ears and blood in his mouth and his legs—no, hell no, his _legs_ …! The monster rose from the floor, red lightning flashing around her, and Jean collapsed.

Roy was saying something, maybe grabbing his arm but he couldn’t feel—oh fuck he couldn’t feel— 

He was coughing, retching, gasping for breath. The roaring was getting louder, bright stars sparking at the edges of his vision, and as he fell forward into the greasy ash-black water he thought: _I really have the worst luck with women_.

 

There was a moment where he stirred, the world whirling around him, and thought everything was fine. He was freezing, freezing cold and wet, but he wasn’t hurt, was he? Nothing hurt. Nothing really—whatever he was laying on bumped up and down, an unfamiliar voice snapped something Jean couldn’t hear, and then he was fading again, back into a hazy darkness.

 

He woke up screaming, agony chasing itself up and down his ribcage, his head pounding, pounding, pounding. There were bright lights above him and cold metal below him—below his back, anyway. Slippery hands grabbed him, and he fought, he needed up, he needed up, he needed to see.

_Don't cut them off! Don't cut them off!_

A sharp, high voice was calling out brisk orders, but he couldn’t understand them. Were they ordering him to do something? Didn’t they see he was hurt?

There was a pinch in his arm, just barely distinct through the sea of pain he was floating in and then the blurry shapes were growing foggier, the pain falling away. For a moment, he saw himself, half-naked and bloody, surrounded by glaring lights and blue-green bodies, then he was gone again. He was just relieved he could see his legs.

 

Consciousness returned to Jean slowly. It was a slow, general kind of awareness, that he was in a bed, that something itched and tugged at his elbow, that the room he was in was open and echo-y. That he was not alone. He found himself staring at the plain plaster ceiling without being conscious of opening his eyes. For some time, he drifted there, staring at that ceiling. Not content, but simply… existing. Everything felt cloudy and surreal. Like he didn't really want anything to be real.

But he couldn't stay floating in that white cloud forever. The scratch of the wool hospital blankets on his arms, the buzzing hum of the electric lights, the dull but growing ache that suffused his torso: all slowly asserted their presence, dragging him down out of that drifting space. He felt… sticky. Sweat-sticky, maybe, or fever-sticky. His face felt hot, his fingers cold, and when he licked his lips they were sticky, too.

_I know when a freshly burned body is nearby, because my lips get sticky from the fat._

Mustang's voice swam up from his memory and Jean retched, his gut spasming. Twin spikes of pain shot through the centre of him and he cried out. 

"Lieutenant!" 

With a jolt so sharp it was nearly physical, the rest of reality fell into place. One of the two nurses next to the bed was at his side, easing him back onto the pillows. He swallowed, licked his lips again, cringed and fought back the gagging. He really didn't want to do that again, shit.

"Lieutenant?" She peered at him, a round-faced woman with brown hair and crow's-feet creasing her eyes. "How are you feeling?" Her words were as brisk and business-like as her hands as she re-settled pillows and blankets around him.

There sure did seem to be a lot of pillows. He didn't remember having this many the last time he was in a hospital.

"Uh." Jean dragged his mind sluggishly away from the pillows. "Like I need a shower," he said, then winced at how hoarse and raspy his voice was. "And a drink."

"Well, we can do one of those," the nurse said, already moving. A glass of water appeared in front of him, but when he went to reach for it, a gloved hand gently, but firmly, stopped him. 

"Minimal arm movement for a few days, Lieutenant," she said. "You have quite a few stitches in you that we don't want tearing."

A straw was deposited in the glass and held up to his lips. Jean glared at it, and clenched his hand, digging nails into the coarse weave of the blanket.

"How long's 'a few days'?" he demanded. The nurse—a Major, by her stripes, shit—levelled an unimpressed look at him.

"As long as the doctor says, unless you want to bleed out internally."

Oh. Yeah. That would suck. Jean scowled and leaned forward. It was awkward as hell, drinking from a glass someone else was holding, but the water felt so good going down Jean couldn't bring himself to care a whole lot.

Only once he had drained all of that first glass, half of a second, and settled back into his pillows did the nurse introduce herself.

"I am Major Langston, and I'll be your primary nurse-attendant; this is Second Lieutenant Yojima." She gestured behind her to the other nurse, a young man with light brown skin and black hair.

"Your attending physician is Lt.-Col. Doctor Morahan," she continued. "Now that you're awake, she will be coming in to speak with you about your condition."

For the first time, the major's impassiveness softened. Over her shoulder he saw Yojima glance down towards his legs.

"Yes ma'am," he said, as she clearly expected a response, but the words fell woodenly from his lips. Resolutely, Jean looked forward and not down. As Major Langston nodded and turned to exit the room, Yojima trailing after her, Jean tried his very hardest to not think about how he couldn't feel the weight of the blanket on his legs.

 

Dr. Morahan was a whipcord lean woman with a hawkish nose and bright amber eyes who instantly put Jean in mind of the East. Sure enough, when she spoke there was an Eastern drawl slipping out from behind the clipped Central accent.

“Name, rank, and number?” was the first thing she asked, striding into the room, past the empty bed between Jean and the door.

He blinked at her, mind churning slowly as he tried to figure out why the hell she was asking that.

“Uh, don't you already got that?” Jean asked. She smiled, her face softening instantly. Jean liked her better than the stone-faced Major already.

“Yes, but I need to know that you do,” Dr. Morahan replied. 

“Oh,” he said, grinning back at her sheepishly. “Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc, eight-six-six-seven-oh-seven-oh-four, ma'am.”

She nodded and came to a halt at his bedside, looking him over keenly. And thoroughly. Jean shifted, feeling like a bug under a magnifying glass, then hissed as even that slight twist of his torso sparked pain, brief and tight, like elbowing a bruise.

“How are you feeling, Lieutenant?” she asked, and Jean opened his mouth to repeat his line about wanting a shower—then caught the knowing look in her eye and looked away. He stared at his lap, trying to figure out a way to say ‘like fucking shit’ that didn't involve so many vulgarities. 

His lap, where his hands were folded, he realized. He could feel the blanket beneath his hands, could see the bulk of his legs beneath that but… cautiously, Jean unfolded his hands and spread them, pressing down.

He may as well have been touching someone else.

“Shit,” he whispered, something awful and angry burning behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut, bit down on his tongue. Pressed harder with his hands. Still, nothing.

He hadn't meant that as his answer, but the doctor took it as one.

“Yes,” she said, “I imagine so. I've never thought second-degree burns were lucky before, but without them, you'd be a dead man, Lieutenant.”

Second-degree…? 

His eyes flew open and he frowned up at her.

“What?” 

“Colonel Mustang cauterized the initial puncture wounds shut. A terrible idea, usually, but it did keep you from exsanguination.” She paused, clearly taking Jean’s wide-eyed look for lack of understanding. “Exsanguination means—”

“Bleeding out, yeah, I know.” Jean felt exhausted, but his mind was reeling, desperately trying to remember. The explosion, the room, Lust. 

“You have no sensation in your legs, correct?” Her voice was soft, sympathetic. Pitying, maybe. Resentment boiled up in Jean and he had to look up at her uniform, at the rank bars peeking out from beneath the white lab coat, to hold his tongue.

“Yes, ma’am,” he bit out.

She nodded, obviously unsurprised. If she knew, why the hell was she getting him to state the obvious?

“Can you try to move your toes for me, Lieutenant?” Dr. Morahan asked.

He glared first at the lumps at the far ends of his legs, that he only knew were there because he could see them, and then glared up at the doctor.

“No,” he said flatly, “it won’t work.”

She sighed. “Try for me, please.”

For a brief, horrible moment he had hope. He couldn’t _feel_ anything, but if she was asking him to try then maybe…? Jean willed his toes to move. Nothing. Tried to twitch his feet, even a centimeter. Still nothing. Legs, knees, even just clenching the muscles of his butt—nothing.

Panic swelled, choking him. Desperately, he gasped for breath. He shut his eyes, counted, held. Exhaled. Repeated.

“Lieutenant?” Dr. Morahan asked, concern clear in her voice.

Jean inhaled, longer and shakily, and then released it all in a gust. He buried his face in a hand, rubbing at his eyes. Sweet fuck, his head ached.

“Nothing, alright?” he snapped. “I can’t move or feel fucking _nothing_ below—” He waved at his stomach. Never before had Jean been so grateful to _feel_ like he’d just taken a dozen fists to his abdomen.

“Please tell me I can smoke in here,” he croaked, staring fixedly down at his lap. He didn’t dare look up, to see what would surely be that soft, dripping pity in her bright eyes.

“You’re a smoker?” Her voice was soft, professional. Unreadable.

“Yeah,” Jean said. He looked up to see her studying him with an inscrutable, pinched look. Disapproval, he supposed.

“Only one a day,” Morahan said. “If you had some with your uniform, one of the nurses should be able to fetch them for you, after we’re done.”

Jean nodded wearily, unable to find it in himself to protest. One a day. Hell. And _how_ long was he going to be here?

 

The next few hours passed in a blur. Morahan delivered a crisp, technical account of what exactly his injuries were that Jean knew he should have paid more attention to than he did, but he was, frankly, exhausted. Exhausted and confused and desperate for a cigarette and he really, _really_ just wanted to be left alone. Instead he got Langston and Yojima bustling back in for a dizzying round of tests and bandage changes. Why they needed to prod him with tiny needles up and down his legs and torso as if his word wasn’t good enough, he didn’t know. They were professional about it, at least, and Jean found himself suddenly grateful for Langston’s brisk, impersonal manner.

The most alone he got was when Yojima was left with him to introduce him to the awkward and embarrassing world of bedpans and catheters and (said by the young nurse way too cheerfully) ‘manually assisted bowel movements’. 

Then it was a round of medications, a brief test of how much arm movement he could safely manage, and finally— _finally_ —Jean was left alone in the room with a tray of food and a single cigarette.

He forced himself to eat half of the unpalatable mush, then he pushed it away and lit his cigarette with shaking hands. There was a window to his right, pale yellow curtains against a pale blue wall. Despite the window and the daylight filtering in, the walls seemed too high, too close, too tight. Smoking wasn’t stopping the trembling in his hand, Jean noticed. It was like he was watching someone else’s hand, pale pink skin and yellow-edged nails, holding the cigarette and trembling.

This was it, then.Sure, the way Morahan had talked it was still too early for them to make any calls one way or the other about his chances of recovery. But Jean knew, he knew with the sour, sinking weight of all the fear he’d felt since those two long black spears had shot up out of the burnt wreckage.

“Shit,” he whispered, and stubbed out the cigarette with a still-shaking hand before he could drop it and set his blankets on fire. Hot tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. He sagged back against the pillows and shut his eyes.

What the hell was he going to tell Roy?

 

Jean woke some time later to dim lighting filtering in from the hall and grey shadows stretching across the ceiling. His mouth was cotton-dry, as if he’d been drinking, and his eyelids felt like they might have been glued shut. And damn, but was he ever sore. Which was a lot more horrifying, now that he knew just how many painkillers they had him on. And still he ached all over—or, well. Almost all over. All that he could feel. 

He lay there staring at the ceiling and blinking fiercely, gritting his teeth against the burning behind his eyes, for several minutes. Major Langston’s warnings echoed in his ears as Jean lifted a hand to his eyes with agonizing slowness to rub the sleep from them. He lowered his hand back to his lap and looked about, trying to see if he had any water within reach. As he slowly leaned towards the side table, Jean realized he wasn’t alone in the room any longer.

Why the curtain between their beds wasn’t drawn he didn’t know, but to Jean’s left, laid out on his back and looking small and pale and corpse-still, was Roy. Fear ricocheted through him, not listening to his internal argument of ‘they don’t put dead men in hospital beds’. Jean had to sit and watch, holding his own breath for several long seconds, before finally spotting the gentle rise and fall of Roy’s chest beneath the blankets.

He breathed out shakily and sagged back against the pillows. He hadn’t realized that Roy had been injured too. The sight of him _here_ was… weird, honestly. Weird and kind of frightening. Impulsive protective idiot of a CO though he was, Mustang still usually made it out of scraps alright. Mostly because of Hawkeye and her colonel-wrangling skills, Jean figured. Of course when he’d been left with Roy, he managed to fuck that up, too.

But then, Mustang was best at a range. And that mess of a fight had definitely not been at range. So here he was, lips pale and face drained of colour, dark circles under closed eyes. A patch of gauze was taped over one cheek. His hair lay in a messy, sweaty tangle and Jean itched to be able to reach out and brush it off his forehead. But the beds were too far away. And that would be weird, anyway. Probably.

Like him sitting here and watching Roy sleep. Jean cursed quietly and shut his eyes, thumping his head back into the pillows. When he opened his eyes, only the blank plaster of the ceiling greeted him. 

“Fuck,” he told the ceiling and yeah, he sounded about as tired as he felt. This was a mess. He was a mess. He was a _useless_ fucking mess. 

From his left there came a quiet groan. Shit. And now he’d woken Roy up.

“Swell damn job, Havoc,” he whispered to himself.

“ ‘Avoc?” Roy’s voice was still blurry with sleep. Jean’s heart twisted and he couldn’t resist looking over. Roy was propped up on one elbow, blinking at him groggily, face still slack and soft.

“Hey, chief,” he said, and tried to smile.

The fog cleared from Roy’s face, chased by something bright and desperate.

“Jean!” Roy breathed, “You’re—”

He was a lot of things, right now, but whatever Roy had been about to say was cut off by the man himself as he suddenly scrambled at the covers, yanking them aside and practically throwing himself from the bed. Jean watched, bewildered, as Roy fought with blankets and hospital gown and IV drip, nearly growling in frustration, before finally stumbling across the few feet of floor separating them.

He halted at the edge of Jean’s bed, pressing an arm across his stomach. The bandages wrapped around his hand were a stark white against the blue-green of the gown. With the other hand he clutched at the IV stand. He stared down at Jean, a tight frown on his face.

“How are you?” Roy asked, finally. Urgently, almost pleading. _Second-degree burns_ , Jean heard the doctor’s voice saying, _without them you’d be a dead man_.

_Paralyzed_ , Jean thought. _Can’t feel my fucking legs_. _Real fucking sore._ How was he supposed to say any of that? How was he supposed to say that to anyone, nevermind to Roy? Roy, who was standing before him, desperate to hear that Jean was alright.

He opened his mouth and—paused. Searched for words that wouldn’t come. He couldn’t do it, he realized miserably. No matter how much he wanted to tell Roy, he couldn’t tell _the Colonel_ that he was done for, out of commission. Couldn’t disappoint him, not just yet. Not now. 

“A bit barbecued,” he finally croaked out.

Relief crashed across Roy’s face like a breaking storm. He laughed, a short ragged sound, and sagged against the IV stand pole.

“Yes, well, I’m not going to apologize for that,” Roy said and Jean forced a laugh as well. He asked, as casually as he could,

“So, you got her then?”

“I did,” Roy confirmed, then grimaced and gestured at his side. “Not before she got me, though.”

“Yeah, shit.” Jean shifted, stared down at his hands. “Hawkeye and Alphonse make it out alright?”

“I believe so,” Roy said and Jean looked up, frowning. 

A grimace met his silent inquiry. “I only just woke up from surgery a few hours ago,” Roy said. “They’re very insistent on proper visiting hours being respected. But I did confirm that Lieutenant Hawkeye was not admitted to hospital.”

“Good,” Jean said, then because he didn’t know what else to say against the weight of everything unsaid building up inside him, again, vaguely: “Good.”

They were silent for a moment, Roy still hovering at his bedside, casting sharp glances around the room and over his shoulder. Jean stared down at his hands and spread his palms against his legs. What would change, if he admitted it? Should he admit it? The doc herself had said they wouldn’t know details for a few days, but…

“Jean.” It was the use of his first name, more than anything else, that pulled Jean’s attention up to Roy again. Roy, who was standing and staring at him still with that worried frown. 

Jean raised his eyebrows in silent inquiry. Roy licked his lips.

“I want—” he began, then broke off, hesitated, and continued quieter—“May I… ? I know this isn’t exactly private, but I want… you almost _died_.” Roy’s voice hitched on that last word, and Jean remembered a grey morning not all that long ago with the weight of Roy crumpled in his arms.

_It’s just because he cares about all his subordinates_ , Jean tried to tell himself, insides twisting nervously. _Don’t read too much into it, Havoc_. But he knew what Roy was asking, knew that risking anything now was probably beyond foolish. Knew that the longer he delayed telling Roy the harder it was going to be.

Knew that really, he wanted to have Roy’s arms around him and to hear him say it would be alright.

“You’ll have to come over here,” Jean finally managed. “Not allowed to lift my arms.”

That was all that had been holding Roy back, it turned out. With an inarticulate noise he lunged gracelessly, half climbing up on the bed. Jean met him as close to halfway as he could, hands flying up as high as he dared to hold Roy’s hips. Then Roy’s hands were on his face and they were kissing, hard and desperate. 

Roy broke the kiss with a gasp, slumping forward to rest his forehead against Jean’s. One hand, the bandaged one, went back to cradling his side. The weight of him over Jean was so familiar, so very normal and reassuring. He was sure if he tried to speak he’d start crying. Would he ever get this again, he wondered bleakly, tightening his grip on Roy and closing his eyes. He could feel the warm brush of Roy’s breath on his own lips. Surely when Roy found out he wouldn’t want—

He didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted this, what few stolen kisses they could sneak in here and now. So Jean swallowed back the words and the anger and the tears and leaned up to kiss him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, big hugely thanks to my beta, SerendipitousOracle who is a doll and a wonder, and additional thanks to our friend who let me pester him about how ranks work in military hospitals. I am also still looking for someone with personal experience with using a wheelchair (or who is paraplegic) to maybe sensitivity beta read my final chapter, so if that's you I'd love to hear from you.
> 
> Also, the author and I have never spoken but I 100% stole Havoc's ident number from the not-strictly-shippy but still heartbreakingly great Jean+Roy fic "The Fall" by colonel_bastard, link: [fic here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4588755).
> 
> Lastly, I regretfully must let you all know that the final chapter will not be up next week. I had hoped for it to be, but it is growing into a _beast_. Aiming for week after next, though, and hopefully something long and meaty will be worth the wait!
> 
> Thanks again for reading, and for the comments and kudos! This month has been kinda kicking my ass and y'all (and this fic) having been making it worth it. <3


	6. Plus One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And after it's all over, everyone is left picking themselves up out of the ashes. Jean's not really sure how to move forward from here. OR: in the history of kisses there have been five kisses rated the most passionate, the most pure. This wasn't one of them, but it was pretty damn good anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit delayed in posting, but here we are!!! I. Can't actually believe I _finished_ this. This is officially the longest thing I've ever written. Thank you to everyone for reading! And big thanks to SerendipitousOracle for beta'ing this whole thing despite not being an FMA fan and making me presentable to the public, with additional shout-out this chapter to Aubergion for the secondary (FMA fan) beta.
> 
> Also, Havoc's got his wheelchair all this chapter, and while I've done a bunch of research, that's no replacement for lived experience so if any wheelchair user reads this and has feedback they'd like to share, I will treasure it deeply. (Same goes for the paraplegia/SCI, of course, as mentioned last chapter.)

A few hours after the eclipse, Maria Ross called Jean. Since the world hadn’t ended, Jean had figured it had all worked out, but it was still a relief to hear from someone, anyone. Everyone was alive, she said, and Alphonse Elric looked very, very skinny (what?), and Mustang might or might not be blind ( _what?_ ). But Jean could barely hear her over the racket in the background and she ended the call with an exhausted, “I don’t know, sir, that’s just what I’ve heard. And Briggs—oh balls— bye!”

Jean had been left staring at the receiver, baffled, with something a lot like dread growing in him. One day slid by, then two more, and the voices on the radio were worse than useless. He smoked a whole pack of cigarettes by the end of the week, and chickened out of calling Central HQ or any of the city hotels every time he thought about it.

Instead here he was, out on the shop’s verandah, smoking the first cigarette of a new pack and watching a handful of village kids kick a ball around in the dust of Bordagne’s main road. Penny, an old hound with more grey than brown around her nose, was dozing in a patch of sunlight nearby. It was only early spring, but this far east the midday heat was enough that Jean felt dozy himself. He was seriously considering joining Penny in her nap when he heard footsteps from inside the shop and the tentative creak of the wooden door.

“Jean, dear?” 

“Be along in a bit, Ma,” he sighed, lifting the cigarette to his lips, more out of habit than any real desire.

“The phone’s for you,” his mother said. She sounded nervous. Jean frowned and lowered the cigarette.

“What? Who is it? If it’s the Discharge Office again…” For a bunch of people who spent all their time pushing papers, they sure weren’t very good at it. That, or someone had told them to keep losing his paperwork, after everything with Mustang and Bradley. Jean leaned forward to stub out the cigarette in the ashtray on the railing. His mother had tried to keep the calls from him the first month he’d been back and they’d driven her half mad.

“No, no! It’s not the military. Or, well, I don’t think it is. It’s that girl of yours?”

Jean froze, hands halfway to his brakes. Then he cleared his throat and kept going, releasing the wheelchair’s brakes and checking for how close Penny’s tail was to the wheels before turning. 

“My girl, huh?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. His last ‘girl’ had been Solaris, but surely there was no way—Roy had said he’d burned her to ash, burned her stone, they’d _won_ , the homunculi were all—

Cheerfully, oblivious to the panic beating double time in his head, his mother beamed down at him from the doorway, the lines at the corners of her eyes creasing heavily (they still caught him by surprise, she looked so _old_ now).

“That sweet girl with the dark hair? Maria, I think her name was?”

 _Oh._ Feeling like nine of kinds of idiot, Jean closed his eyes for a moment to let the panic wash through him. Behind it, though, rose up all the wild speculations he’d filled the past week of silence with. And hard on the heels of that came the sinking realization that if his mother thought he and Maria were an item, she’d never let it go. 

Lucky for him there was an easy way to explain why that was never happening. And it was even true. True was good. Anything that didn’t involve lying to his parents was good. He cleared his throat, opened his eyes, and pasted on his best embarrassed grin.

“Oh! Hah, nah, she’s not my girl. She’s just a, y’know, friend. From the military.”

Technically the truth, and hopefully enough for her to drop it. Even if he really hadn’t met Ross properly until after his discharge. Even if he wasn’t really sure if ‘co-conspirator in international arms smuggling’ counted as friendship. Jean drummed his fingers on top edge of the wheel handrims nervously.

Her smile faded some, as she stepped aside to let him through the door. It was a tight fit for him. The doorway was not quite wide enough for him to get through unless he tucked his arms into his lap at the exact right moment. He’d run into the damn thing countless times in his first couple weeks back, decorating the door frame with a whole new set of dents and his legs and elbows with bruises. Now, he glided on through easily, casters rattling over the threshold and across the old wooden planks.

“Well, she must be a good one, then. She’s been the only one to come by and visit you,” his mother said.

Jean winced. Yeah, also technically true. Which had more to do with Breda being assigned to the other side of the country than anything else. But that wasn’t what she was getting at. If he didn’t put a stop to this now, she’d have their whole courtship planned out before he knew it.

So he sighed heavily and stopped, looking back at her. He could just about see the visions of white dresses and wedding cakes dancing in her eyes. His heart beat heavily in his chest and anxiety pooled in the pit of his stomach, but Jean ignored that as best he could and went for it as bluntly as possible.

“She’s gay, Ma. And I’m not a girl.”

For a moment, neither of them said anything. His mother blinked at him and Jean had to grip his wheels tightly just to fight back the urge to cringe. How would she take it? Did she even know what ‘gay’ meant? It was pretty citified slang, maybe he should have said something plainer.

She blinked a couple more times, then understanding dawned in her eyes and she exclaimed softly, “Oh! Like your Great-Aunt Margie!”

“Like my… what? Great-Aunt Margie?”

“Yes, yes, phone’s waiting for you, dear.” She chivvied him forward with a flap of her hands, and he started rolling again, eager to get his chair’s push-handles out of her reach before she could get any ideas. But she just trotted alongside him, chattering away. 

“You remember, don’t you? Margie and Ana? I know you were only young when they died, but those two were so in love, it was really very sweet you know, together for almost 50 years…”

He let her usher him through the shop and into the back office where their phone sat, receiver off it’s hook and resting on the desk. The chair had been pushed in and she bustled past him hurriedly to drag it out. Jean felt a bit stunned—he did remember them, two elderly women with identical frizzy mops of hair and big, round glasses, but he’d thought they were sisters or something, not… lovers? Wives? Huh.

Waving his mother out of the way, Jean rolled up alongside the chair and locked it in place, swinging one armrest out of the way before hoisting himself sideways into the chair. Honestly, he messed up one transfer and she hovered like he was _five_ again. Determinedly ignoring the way she lingered at the corner of the desk, wringing her hands, Jean hitched himself back into the desk chair more securely and picked up the receiver.

“Hullo?”

“Oh!” There was a background clatter, as if Ross had just knocked something over, then she cleared her throat. “Mr. Havoc! Hello!” 

For a moment, Jean didn’t know what to say. He had half convinced himself that he was never going to hear from Ross again. 

“Geez, Ross, I’ve told ya, just Jean’s fine,” he settled on, falling back into an old complaint. “Or Havoc, if you really gotta.”

His mother backed out of the room, waving at him and beaming. Jean smiled crookedly at her. She got more excited for his phone calls than he did, he was pretty sure. The office door clicked shut.

“Yessir,” Ross said, and then cut off Jean’s next complaint with a hasty: “Not ‘sir’, you’re not military anymore, I know, I know. Sorry, just… habit. You know.”

Jean sighed. Did he ever. “Yeah, I know. What’s going on? Everything alright in Central?”

“Oh! Yes, everything’s fine. Good, actually. All still a bit chaotic, but… good. Grumman’s keeping a handle on things. And Briggs moved out yesterday, finally, so that’s made everything easier. Lieutenant Falman says hello, by the way.”

Jean grinned. The idea of the quiet, bookish man as a Briggs bear still cracked him up.

“Sure, sure, so what’s with the call? You just wanna chat? ‘Cause I won’t say no, if that’s the case.” He’d meant it as a joke, but it came out far more sincere than Jean had really intended. It was great to not be stuck in a hospital any longer, but that novelty had worn off pretty quick. It was so damn boring here, Jean was reminded every day of why he’d enlisted as soon as he could.

Ross laughed anyway though, which Jean appreciated. He supposed she probably knew a thing or two about being stuck in bored isolation.

“No, well, no. Not really.” There was a brief pause, filled with the hiss of static, then Jean heard her take a deep breath. 

“Just thought I’d see if you still needed someone to swing south and pay the Old Cat a visit,” she said.

Jean frowned and straightened up from his slouch, reaching down with one hand to brace himself and readjust how he was sitting.

“Didn’t think we’d still need to, unless…?”

“The Yao’s are headed back,” Ross said briskly, “but I’ve made some friends from the desert, who might be interested. _Mutual_ friends.”

Jean fumbled for the drawer on the left of the desk, pulling out an old ledger that he… really needed to find a better disguise for, if they were going to continue this. ‘Cause, shit, he really wanted to. Especially if these new friends were who he thought, and if it really was _mutual_ …

“Does Rosie know?” He asked, rooting around for a pen. He doubted any of the lines on either end were tapped, but he knew that in a place as rural as this, just about anyone could be listening in. He paid the operator well for privacy, but it’d been a while since they’d had a chat, and really he just needed to get Fuery out here. Or get Fuery’s advice, anyway. Set up a private line, military-grade.

He could hear the grin in Ross’ voice when she replied.

“Oh yeah, Rosie knows. It was half her idea. Guess she’s got a friend down the same way as the Cat, too.”

Huh. Jean swapped hands on the receiver and flipped the ledger open to a clean page. Of course Roy had a ‘friend’ down towards the Aerugan border. A waitress or a dancer or actress, or who knew what. All three, maybe. But if Roy knew...

“She knows this is our show, yeah?” It was petty of Jean, maybe, especially since this was all to help further Roy’s own goals. Jean knew the man, though, and knew he’d end up with his sticky fingers all over it if no one slapped him away. 

The whole point of keeping the past few months of effort with Ross and Xing a secret had been to keep movements and information independent of the Colonel. A matter of necessity after he was compromised, sure. But also the highlight of his damn year, getting to surprise Roy like that.

Ross laughed. “Oh yeah, she knows. Elizabeth told her to mind her own business.”

Jean sniggered. Riza Hawkeye really was his favourite, Breda be damned. He scratched at his goatee, thinking. It wasn’t _really_ necessary, but it’d let Hawkeye know that he knew, and if the way Ross had talked about her in the past was any hint... 

“Pick something up for her when you’re in the south, then,” he said slyly.

“What?!” Ross practically yelped, half-deafening him. “Me? You want me to pick something up for Haw—for Elizabeth?” Was she _squeaking_? Jean had to bite his lip to stifle the delighted laughter.

“Yeah, sure, you can figure something out.” Could she hear him grinning? Probably.

“But I don’t know what she likes!”

Jean debated not giving her anything to go off of, but poor Ross sounded genuinely panicked. So he shrugged, well aware she couldn’t see him, and said, “I think she likes red wine. But don’t take my word for it, I’m no good with women.”

“...” The line buzzed and after a moment’s silence, Ross sighed. “This is because I said she was my type, isn’t it?” 

“Yep, sure is,” Jean said, then added cheekily, “You don’t even need to tell her it’s from me, you know.”

“Oh no, I am definitely blaming it all on you,” was the immediate retort. “I’m hanging up now,” she added, very much not hanging up, “Before you come up with some crazier shit to—to— _set me up_ with Haw—her!”

“Alright,” Jean agreed cheerfully, finally leaning forward to brace the ledger with an elbow and start jotting hasty notes in one column. 

There was a brief pause.

“Also, Breda says to call him at the old office line,” Ross said, then so formally he could practically hear her standing at attention: “You’re full of shit, sir,” and she hung up with a sharp click. 

It was a minute or more of scribbling hasty notes to himself in the ledger before he realized he was grinning like an idiot. Here he’d thought that all the excitement he’d managed to dig up for himself over the past few months would disappear, now that the coup was over. But it wasn’t, those contacts he’d gone to so much trouble for would still be useful. He even still had Hawkeye on his side in their ongoing ‘keep Roy Mustang out of his own trouble’ mission. 

The smile faded from a happy grin into something more wistful as Jean paused, looking down at the yellowed ledger paper and then up and around at the cramped and dusty shop office. It was almost enough for him to feel like maybe he was still part of something, instead of a discharged soldier licking his wounds in an Eastern backwater.

~

“So you got Court-Martial after you for deserting, yet?” was the first thing Jean said to Breda once he got him on the line.

Breda snorted. “Nah,” he said. “Pretty sure Grumman’s backdating some orders, or something. The Brig said he’d take care of it, anyhow.”

Jean blinked, staring at the faded and peeling wallpaper on the office’s far wall. “The Brig?”

“Mustang. He got a promotion. Only took a third of the brass kicking the bucket!” Breda’s laugh, so warm and boisterous in person, sounded tinny and faded over the phone line. Loneliness sat heavy on Jean’s shoulders and he couldn’t bring himself to laugh along. Roy had finally made general rank and he hadn’t known.

Breda’s laugh trailed off. When it met only silence, there was a pause. Jean could see, clear as day, the stolid frown on Breda’s face as he worked through a problem. _Say something_ , he urged himself. _Let him know you’re alright._

He didn’t really believe that, himself.

“Hav? You there?” Breda finally asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Jean forced himself to say. “Yeah, I’m here. That’s… that’s good.”

Even he could hear how hollow his voice sounded. But he’d stopped trying to _pretend_ with Breda a long time ago. He could always see right through Jean, in the end. Like now, a couple hundred kilometers away, and Jean could _hear_ him go silent and start thinking, only the sounds of breathing and static echoing down the line.

He wouldn’t like whatever Breda said next, he suspected glumly.

“You should get outta that town, Hav,” Breda said. As firmly and decisively as he’d once said ‘retired life doesn’t suit you’.

Jean groaned. Yeah, he should have seen that one coming.

“And do what, B?” he asked, already tired of the topic. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought about it, wasn’t as if he was overjoyed at being trapped back in the hometown he’d run from the day he turned 16.

Breda grunted, irritated. “Anything. Whatever you and Ross are up to. Something other than sit there and rot.”

“I’m paralysed, asshole,” Jean snapped. The hand not holding the phone curled into a fist on his thigh and he glared down at his legs, still unable to feel that light pressure. “I can’t do anything _but_ sit.”

With the same stony patience that always drove Jean—and any poker opponents—up the wall, Breda said, “You’re pretty handy with those wheels, according to Ross.”

Jean groaned and slumped forward, forehead hitting the desk with a thunk.

“I hate you,” he muttered, words half muffled by the wood.

Breda chuckled. “Should just be another week or two out here, then I’ll be back east. Could swing up and see you.”

The loneliness was suffocating him, wrapping around him like a thick, miserable blanket. They’d never gone so long without seeing each other since the day they’d met. A month apart, at most. Until now. He blinked rapidly against the sudden burn in his eyes and sat up.

“That’d be… good,” he managed to say.

Breda sighed again. “You hate it there, Hav.”

Jean rolled his eyes. “I _know_ that.”

“So move.”

“It’s not that easy!”

“Why not?”

 _He’s your best friend_ , Jean reminded himself, rubbing at his eyes and gritting his teeth. His best friend, even when he was more stubborn than a mule. He forced his jaw to relax and exhaled shakily. Flattened his hand against the tabletop and pressed his fingers down one by one until he was past wanting to yell and curse and throw the phone down.

“How the hell am I supposed to live on my own, B?” he demanded, face flushing hot with shame. “What if I fall? Or slip in the tub? How do I cook my own fucking food?” 

That had been a shock he hadn’t expected, sitting too low in a wheelchair to really use most stoves or counters comfortably. His physical therapist kept insisting he was a ‘perfect candidate’ for regaining some standing ability, but Jean wasn’t sure he believed that yet.

A stilted silence followed his outburst. Jean ached to be able to see Breda’s face. The man had a poker face second to none, sure, but Jean liked to think he could read him well enough, when it came down to it.

“The Brig’s gonna post me in East City,” Breda said after so long that Jean had nearly blurted an apology just to break the silence. “And I’m pretty sick of barracks. We could live together.”

Jean sighed, and rubbed at his face again. He didn’t regret calling Breda, it was that nice just to hear his voice, but damn, was he ever tired.

“I don’t know, B,” he said wearily. “I really don’t know.”

~

Common consensus around Bordagne was that it was a very strange spring. Jean’d had the same conversation a few dozen times about how hot and dry it was, how bad this was sure to be for the crops, maybe it had something to do with that eclipse? Nah, surely not, the new Fuhrer said it’d all be alright, and so had Mrs. Bradley, bless her. It baffled him, how easily the civilians of his hometown nodded along with the radio, as if they couldn’t hear that Grumman was talking out of his ass saying whatever he thought the people wanted to hear.

He’d catch himself thinking that, and remember that he was a civilian now, too. Then his mood would spiral down and before very long his mother would sigh and chase him outdoors to have a smoke instead of sulking inside.

A few days after Ross called, Jean sat there on the verandah yet again, watching the heat haze waver over the far brown hills and listlessly smoking a cigarette. It was past midday, oven-hot and stifling. No kids played in the street and Penny had moved down to the far corner, chasing the shade. The only movement all up and down Main Street came from the rhythmic back and forth of old Missus Midaya sweeping the floor of her teahouse, her bright shawl passing back and forth inside the open door.

Maybe, Jean mused bitterly, the locals actually did have two cenz of sense to rub together in their brains and just didn’t want to talk bad about the Fuhrer around an ex-soldier. Jean took a deep drag and exhaled the smoke through his nose, relishing the burn. He watched the smoke stream out and billow up, curling into the golden shafts of sunlight and dissipating oh-so-slow.

The puttering growl of a motor wasn’t exactly a surprise, though it did catch his attention. The vehicle itself was a bit of a shock: glossy, black, and modern, nothing like the dingy old trucks the ranchers drove. Something about it seemed awful familiar to Jean, though, and he set the cigarette down in the ashtray, watching intently.

The motor-car rumbled down the street, swerving potholes and trundling almost reluctantly through the deep rutted tracks. As it neared the shop, it began to slow. Jean’s heart leapt into his throat and he grabbed for a sidearm he didn’t have. 

The vehicle lurched to a stop and the motor cut. Jean could hardly hear above the thunder of his heartbeat. Who was it? What did they want? Was it allies of Bradley—of the homunculi—had Ross’ deal gone sour—

The door opened and a dark-haired man stepped out. He was average height, lean, and not visibly armed, dressed to the nines in a sharply tailored suit all in browns and greys, and so utterly unexpected that it took Jean a solid minute to recognize him. 

Glossy shoes, black shine swiftly dusted over with brown, clipped a sharp staccato up the front walk and the stairs and then Roy Mustang was standing in front of Jean, on the front verandah of Havoc General Goods & Supply.

Jean gaped, hardly able to believe his eyes. Roy cleared his throat and looked around, short darting glances away from Jean and then back. He looked… well, sweaty and a bit rumpled, as if he’d just driven a black car through a hot afternoon for several hours. There were red marks on his face, as if he’d been leaning on his knuckles, and his hair was distinctly more tousled on the left side than the right.

He was still somehow the best-looking person Jean had ever laid eyes on, even shuffling awkwardly on the verandah, unable to settle on where to put his hands. It all made Jean suddenly, horribly, aware of how his beard needed trimming, how his hair was greasy and overdue for washing, how his trousers fit loose on his thinning legs.

“ _Roy?_ ” Jean breathed, and got a hesitant smile in return. 

“Hello?” Roy said, and maybe the pink in his cheeks was from the heat of the day but maybe it wasn’t. Jean laughed in delighted disbelief and unbraked his chair, wheeling forward with one hand outstretched. Questions, so many questions, rose to his mind and his lips.

Roy clasped his hand warmly, a more confident smile spreading across his face, and for one crazy moment Jean almost tugged him down to steal a kiss. But as their hands met, his mother’s voice rang out from inside.

“Jeanie? Is someone there?”

Roy’s smile turned devilish. He mouthed ‘Jeanie?’ and Jean groaned.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” he warned Roy with a low voice.

“Would I ever?” Roy retorted, grin only growing wider at the suspicious glare Jean levelled on him.

Reluctantly tugging his hand from Roy’s, Jean spun his chair towards the door and called back.

“Yeah, Ma!” He paused, considering his next words, and glanced back at Roy. Who was still grinning wickedly. Jean narrowed his eyes and called out, “It’s _Brigadier-General_ Mustang!”

There was a moment of ominous silence from inside. The grin slid off Roy’s face as he winced and hissed ‘ _Jean!_ ’. Then Jean’s mother burst out the door in a clattering of broom and dustpan.

“ _Brigadier-General_!” she gasped, wide-eyed and breathless, staring at Roy. With one last dirty look for Jean, Roy turned to bow to Jean’s mother, the man’s mischief smoothed away behind the officer’s manners.

“Mrs. Havoc,” he said, as Jean’s mother’s stared, clutching the broom almost defensively in front of her, “A pleasure to see you again. My apologies for dropping in like this.”

She bobbed a hasty bow of her own, nearly jabbing herself with the broom handle. “It’s no trouble,” she said faintly, still saucer-eyed, “Come in, come in, please, out of this heat. And just Angeliq, General, we’re not real fancy around here.”

“Then Roy is fine, Angeliq,” he said, flashing her a smooth grin. Something twisted uncomfortably in Jean’s stomach at the way his mother blushed at that.

She ushered them inside. Watching Roy step into the cluttered old shop was surreal, really. Seeing the familiar line of that back, the slope of his shoulders, framed against the sagging angles of the old wooden shelves, Jean couldn’t tear his eyes away. He couldn’t imagine what Roy was even doing here, couldn’t come up with anything to set the dizzying collision of the two halves of his life into rights.

Roy was looking around the shop with interest, as if the bags of flour and rolls of fabric were anything particularly interesting. The rattle of Jean’s wheels over warped wooden floorboards was deafening, somehow, despite being no louder than normal. Roy glanced back and down, and Jean grimaced around a wince, gripping the handrims a bit too tight on his next push. Behind them, his mother shut the door.

“Just go on back and to the left, now,” she said. “Give you two a bit of privacy.”

Roy looked at Jean, an eyebrow arched in silent inquiry. He took a shaky breath and nodded. A small smile flickered across Roy’s face and he turned and headed through the broad central aisle. Jean gave him the space of a few strides before squaring his shoulders and pushing forward once more. He could handle this. Whatever ‘this’ was, he could deal with it. He had to believe that.

“Can I get you anything, Roy?” Jean’s mother called anxiously after them, hovering behind Jean. “Water? Tea? Sweet tea?”

“Water would be lovely,” Roy said, shooting her one of those camera-bright Mustang smiles over his shoulder as he turned the corner.

Jean heard her immediately turn right, heading towards the door to the house. 

“You don’t need to flirt with my _mother,_ ” he said waspishly, as soon as they were through the door to the back office.

Jean couldn’t make heads or tails of the look Roy gave him. Something twisted in the pit of his stomach. Had it been that long, really? Hadn’t he been able to read Roy better than this, once?

“I hardly think being polite counts as flirting,” Roy said slowly, still looking at Jean with a strange look in his eye. As if Jean were a puzzle, something unexpected. Horribly aware of each movement, and fumbling as if it was his first week in the chair, Jean stopped and reached down to flip the brakes. Then he folded his arms over his chest and scowled up at Roy. 

Whatever brief, warm familiarity they had shared on the porch had disappeared, leaving Jean feeling hollow and off-balance. He didn’t like this, he realized miserably. He’d spent so much time missing Roy, and now all he could think about was how different everything was. How frustrating Roy could be.

“Maybe not your kinda flirting,” he snapped, “but _normal_ people might think so.”

Roy pulled back, frowning deeply. A viciously petty flare of satisfaction shot through Jean as Roy looked at him, confusion writ large over his face. Guilt followed swiftly on satisfaction’s heels, but Jean stamped down on it, hardening his glare.

“Jean, I—”

The door swung open, and his mother bustled in, a tray in her hands. 

“Ice-water!” she announced cheerfully, setting the tray and its pitcher and glasses down on the desk. “You look parched, Roy. I hope you didn’t drive in from _Central_.”

The look she gave Roy, even as she poured him a glass of water, was the exact look she had given Jean every time he’d done something foolish at school.

“Thank you,” Roy said, still looking unsettled. He took a sip of water that Jean figured was as much to hide his face as ease thirst, and sure enough, when he lowered the glass, General Mustang’s smooth mask was back.

“I’m in East for a few days, so I thought I’d make the drive,” he said. “Long, but not nearly as long as coming from Central.”

“Oh good, good. Here, Jean—” 

Jean tore himself away from watching Roy to see his mother holding a glass of water out to him. He grunted and turned back away. 

“I”m not thirsty,” he said flatly, sour words dropping like stones into the small-talk. He could feel the disapproving look his mother was giving him, but he didn’t look back at her. He kept watching Roy, instead, who was now frowning again. Their gazes met for what was surely only a moment but felt, briefly, like an eternity. Jean lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes into a glare, daring Roy to say, or do, anything.

Roy cleared his throat and looked away first. 

“Ah…” His mother hesitated for a moment, hovering on the edge between them. She had set the glass of water down at least, and was now twisting her hands into her apron. Her eyes darted between them, a faint frown knitting her brow. 

“Well!” she said brightly, “it’s very good of you to stop by for a visit, Roy. Jean speaks very highly of you, you know, and honestly, I’m just glad when he does get visitors; it’s very quiet around here.”

Cheeks hot, Jean opened his mouth to say something, anything, to protest how sad his mother made that sound. But Roy beat him to it, cutting off the end of his mother’s chatter with the sharp click of glass on wood.

“I’m glad to visit, of course,” he said, “and I would have liked to come by sooner, but this isn’t a social visit.”

Jean squinted at Roy, abruptly suspicious, but Roy was still focused on Jean’s mother. He didn’t believe half of what Roy had just said, but he wasn’t sure _which_ half. But one of Roy’s hands delved into the waistcoat and fished out a thick envelope. The Amestrian military seal glared up from it like a green mockery of everything Jean had lost. He scowled.

Shoulders as square as if he were in uniform, Roy turned and held the envelope out to Jean. 

Their fingers brushed as Jean took the envelope and it was only with a great effort of will that Jean didn’t immediately jerk back as if scalded. Trying desperately to ignore how his fingers tingled where they’d touched Roy’s, he broke the seal with little ceremony. A thick wad of bills and a folded piece of creamy, high-quality paper greeted him. He stared, first at the bills, then up at Roy.

Roy was looking straight at him, a smug smile lingering on his face.

“Jean? What…?” His mother’s voice broke in hesitantly. Roy twitched, as visibly as if he’d been slapped, and looked away.

“If I’d realized the Discharge Office was giving you all such a run-around, I’d have stepped in earlier,” Roy said. “Given the amount of correct backpay due, I thought I’d best drive it up myself, rather than trust the post.”

“Oh! Oh, General, you didn’t have to!” 

Jean tuned out his mother’s polite protests, and Roy’s equally polite assurances, in favour of pulling out the paper. The too-familiar departmental letterhead greeted him. Jean scanned down through the letter, skipping through the formalities and wordiness. He had gotten the Discharge mess sorted out, he’d thought, so what the hell was Mustang—

_...status has been reassessed and it has been determined that your disability and/or disabling injury was sustained during active duty in engagement with recognized enemies of the State. As this qualifies as a major change from prior assessment of Personal Misconduct your file with the Benefits & Severance sub-department has been updated; furthermore…_

He had to reread the words several times before they really sank in through the buzz of disbelief. He had given up on the idea of getting his discharge counted as a combat injury, given everything. Had figured it was just another thing to write off, a casualty of secrecy like so much else in his service record. That Roy hadn’t accepted that, had gone to this effort… Jean didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about that. 

He didn’t dare look up until he heard the office door shut behind his mother. When he finally did, it was to see Roy slumping against the door looking dazed.

“Is she always so insistent on people staying for dinner?” Roy asked. He ran a hand through his hair, which only succeeded in mussing it further. Jean sniggered.

“Yeah, usually. How many meals she talk you into?”

“None?” Roy looked apologetic at that, as if he expected Jean to be disappointed. Which Jean wasn’t. Definitely not. At all.

“I have to be back in the city tonight,” Roy continued, “so I can’t stay long.”

Jean swallowed past the lump in his throat that had no business being there.

“What’s this about, then?” he demanded, gesturing at the envelope in his lap. “Reassessed? And why the hell’d you really come out here, Roy? I know damn well you could’ve sent a military courier.”

For a long, uncomfortable moment, Roy looked at him, frowning. The tiny electric fan shoved into the office’s single window hummed uselessly, doing little to disturb the heavy heat of the day. Jean regretted not taking that glass of water; his mouth was dry and face hot. He met Roy’s dark gaze with a stubborn tilt of his chin. He wasn’t backing down.

Finally, Roy straightened up from his slouch and clasped his hands behind his back. Jean saw a muscle in his jaw flex before he spoke, voice tight.

“I thought that would have been obvious,” he said slowly, never looking away, something fierce and unnameable burning his eyes. Jean quashed the flicker of hope that sparked as firmly as he had his earlier guilt.

“And I thought I told you to leave me behind,” Jean said sharply.

At that Roy did look away, over towards the unsteady thrum of the fan and the broken shafts of sunlight falling past it onto the desk. He took a deep breath, deep enough that the heave of his chest drew Jean’s eye. It was a new waistcoat, Jean thought. Cut differently, with sharper lines and a tighter fit. Roy crossed the room in a few quick strides until he stood at the edge of the desk. He reached out and traced the edge of his water glass, glistening with condensation, frowning down into it before looking up and facing Jean.

“Maybe I’m tired of waiting,” he said. A smile trembled at the edge of his lips. “Maybe I’ve missed you more than I’d thought possible.”

 _Oh_. The bastard never did believe in fighting fair. It was as if he’d just taken a fist to the diaphragm, the breath knocked right out of him. It wasn’t as if Jean’d never thought about it, never woken up wondering what it’d be like to not be alone in his bed, but— His stomach twisted and the sour taste of fear lingered in his mouth.

“Missed me,” he managed to say, “or missed who I was?”

Roy got it. Jean could see it, in the shadows in his eyes and the twist of his mouth, the way he looked down at the chair, at the angle of Jean's knees.

"You, Jean," Roy said, "any way you are." Hell, Jean wanted to believe him. He really did. But—

“I’m paralyzed, Roy,” he blurted out. “From my belly button down, more or less. Not being able to walk’s the least of it, really. Got almost no sensation, no muscle control. I can’t— it wouldn’t be like before.”

“You haven't changed _that_ much," Roy protested the instant Jean fell silent.

“Easy for you to say,” Jean said bitterly. “You don’t know the half of it.” 

Roy slumped, propping a hip against the desk and rubbed a hand over his eyes. Sunlight caught on a shiny, thick gash of scar tissue on the back of Roy’s hand, still pink and new. He wasn’t wearing gloves, Jean realized with a start. Hadn’t been this whole time.

“I… yes, you’re right,” Roy said, and a knot of something tight and scared in Jean relaxed, just a little bit.

He tore himself away from staring at the scarred hand, now resting on the desk, to look at Roy’s face. 

“And not to make light of any… challenges, but Jean I—” Roy paused, then visibly steeled himself, dark eyes glittering, “—I’m more than a little in love with you.”

For the second time in as many minutes, Jean gaped, breathless and stunned. He was dreaming. This was a dream, he’d dreamed this up. The car, the letter, all of it. But Roy stood there haloed in afternoon sunlight, a small, nervous smile on his lips.

“I— you— what,” Jean croaked. His heart was racing and he couldn't seem to catch his breath. Alright. Not a dream. Roy had really just—

A faint pink flush blossomed on Roy’s cheeks, but he kept on looking at Jean.

“It’s funny,” Roy said, as calmly as if commenting on the weather, “what the possible end of the world can clarify. Not that I didn’t already suspect it, I'd been missing you the most, you know, but then there was that phone call and the Gate and everything and I, well, I wasn't sure if I would tell you or not but—”

“You're in love with me,” Jean interrupted. The word felt weird and weighty on his tongue. The torrent of words Roy had just rattled off raised a whole lot of questions, but Jean was still reeling from that first, world-shaking statement. He’d hardly dared imagine, even at his boldest, that Roy would ever fall for him the way he’d felt himself falling, for years.

The man in question turned brick-red, as if hearing it was infinitely more embarrassing than saying it.

“I… yes?” 

He said it so weakly, so sheepishly, that Jean couldn't help but laugh. He buried his face in the hand that wasn't still clutching the letter, hardly able to begin to make sense of the mess of emotions tangling up within him. When he stopped laughing and spoke, the words caught and rasped in his throat. 

“You're an idiot.”

“So I've been told.” 

Jean looked up to see Roy still watching him, a soft, rueful smile on his face. Jean’s heart skipped a beat and he tried to smile back.

“I suppose I am too,” he said, and he felt like maybe a little bit of a coward, for not saying it more explicitly, but Roy’s face lit up, bright and warm. The knot in Jean's chest loosened further.

He'd spent too long fighting to figure out how to live in and with his body, though, for his doubts to just disappear. 

“I mean it,” he said, and the words came out like thistles, but it needed saying. “It won’t be like before. It can't be.”

“Do you mean the sex, or the relationship?” Roy asked, and it was Jean's turn to blush at the bluntness.

“...Both?” 

“Well, I'm willing to try, if you are.” 

Hope, Jean was realizing, made him feel kind of light-headed.

He let himself stare, really stare, at Roy, looking long and hard and drinking in the sight of him. Here, in front of Jean, alive and whole and looking like there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

“Yeah,” Jean said, “I… I think I'd like that. If you're sure. About…”

He gestured awkwardly at himself, torso and legs and chair. Roy's gaze followed the sweep of his hand, then trailed slowly back up Jean's body. When his eyes met Jean's again, there was a familiar heat burning in them that Jean hadn't seen in a long time.

“Oh, I'm sure,” Roy said. And he smiled that cat-with-the-cream smile. 

There were nerves underneath the old, familiar thrill that ran through Jean. He knew that. But he also knew that they weren’t about to strip naked here and now, and—hell. He'd spent far too much time trapped in this tiny town with nothing but his thoughts. If this was the excitement life saw fit to throw at him, then he was grabbing it with both hands. 

He grinned. “One condition, then.”

Roy looked startled, then a little wary. “Oh?”

It wasn’t something Jean had given much thought to, but now it seemed obvious. Necessary, even, in the shadow of all the lies he’d been telling his parents these past months.

“No more secrets. Not that we gotta go shout it from the rooftops, but…” He shrugged. “I ain’t military any more, and I’m well fed up with secrets.”

For one awful, unending moment, Roy hesitated. Jean could just about see the wheels turning, the calculations racing through Roy’s mind.

Then he smiled that rare warm, crooked smile of his.

“Alright,” Roy said. “No more secrets.”

There was sunshine in his chest, his face was hot, and it hurt from grinning.

“Get over here and kiss me, Mustang,” Jean demanded. Roy laughed and obeyed, crossing the room in a few swift strides. He bent down and then—

The brush of warm lips and hot breath. Roy’s hands cradling the back of Jean’s head, clutching at his shoulder. Jean ran his own hands along Roy’s sides, strained upwards and deepened the kiss, chasing the taste of him.

They broke apart with a wet gasp. Roy laughed, breathless, and straightened up. He was rumpled and red-faced, tight new waistcoat slightly askew and lips kiss-swollen, grinning at Jean with the same broad giddiness Jean felt. He’d never looked better. The heat of the small room in the afternoon sun suddenly wasn’t so heavy, the bright day beyond the window a promise instead of a threat.

Even his mother’s voice from the doorway, shocked and hesitant, couldn’t dim the glow in his chest.

“Jeanie?” she said, and both Jean and Roy stiffened. Then Roy smirked down at him, challenge clear in his eyes. Jean took a deep breath. Shit, well, he had said ‘no secrets’, hadn’t he? So he held out a hand to Roy and turned to face his mother.

~

Jean twisted the phone cord around his finger, looping it again and again and again, as he waited for the hotel to fetch Breda. The longer he waited, the more his stomach also twisted in knots, nerves eating away at him. It seemed to be taking forever, but it had also taken forever for anyone to pick up the hotel’s phone in the first place, so he wasn’t about to give up now. He hoped this would be an easier conversation than with his mother—Breda already knew Jean fancied men, too, at least. But Breda also knew Mustang, far better than Jean’s mother did.

He had just about cut the circulation off in his finger when Breda finally picked up.

“Hello?” Breda always sounded suspicious when he answered the phone. Jean grinned. 

“It’s me,” he said, and thought he even managed to sound pretty much normal.

“Havvo! Hey, wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.” Breda sounded genuinely surprised by that. Jean snorted.

“Sure, sure. And when were you gonna tell me about redeploying out East next week?”

There was a pause, and then Breda said slowly, “...When the Brig confirmed it, I guess. Next week? Where’d you hear that?”

The phone was getting slippery in his grip. He hadn’t expected an opening to come up this soon in the conversation but…

“Oh, you know,” Jean said, as casually as he could. “From… Roy.”

Shit, that felt weird, to call him that while speaking to _Breda_. There was another, even longer, pause on Breda’s end. Jean tried to wait him out, he really did, but the silence built up until he couldn’t hold himself back.

“When he was up today, I mean. He, uh, drove up. To see me. And… stuff. Fixed up some of that shit with Discharge for me, yanno—”

He was babbling. He knew he was babbling but he couldn’t stop himself, the words just kept tumbling out of his mouth. Breda’d never had a problem with interrupting Jean’s bullshit, though.

“ _Roy_ , Hav? Since when are you and Mustang on first name terms?”

He needed to stop winding the cord around his finger before he broke something. He took a deep, shaky breath. _Get it over with, Havoc._

“ _Sincewe’rekinduvathing_ ,” he blurted. Then he closed his eyes and held his breath and hoped Breda wouldn’t make him say it again, because he was starting to feel nauseous.

“... A thing. As in, a… friend… thing?” Breda hadn’t sounded so dubious since that time the junior officer’s mess had claimed to be selling ‘real meat’. Jean laughed—well, giggled, really, the high-pitched slightly hysterical noise he made was definitely closer to a giggle.

“More like a…”— _sex? No, not just that, now. Romance? Geez, that sounded sappy_ — “...dating. Thing.”

More of that awful, endless silence.

“B?” He said nervously, readjusting his grip on the phone, “Buddy? You, uh… you still—”

“I’m still here,” Breda said. Slowly, in that way that had Jean picturing Breda’s squint-eyed thinking face, the one he got when he was really working at putting all the pieces together. Jean was suddenly nervous for entirely different reasons.

“You—” Breda started, then stopped. Jean bit down on his tongue to hold back the urge to fill the silence. 

“Please tell me,” Breda finally said, still in that slow, calm way of his that could mean anything from exhaustion to anger, “that you didn’t start going with him when he was our CO?”

Jean laughed, and pulled his finger free of the twisted cord so he could drop his forehead into his hand. 

“No,” he said. “No, he wasn’t our CO, then.” 

Breda grunted. “Good,” he said.

Jean should probably have left it at that, but he was still giddy with nerves and relief and his damn mouth kept right on going.

“You really think I’d do something stupid as that?”

“‘Course you would, Havvo,” Breda said, but at least he sounded fond instead of pissed. “You’re always an idiot for a pretty face.”

Jean couldn’t even be mad at that, really, because yeah, Breda had a point there. Maybe Roy was rubbing off on him some though, because he just couldn’t let a line like that slide.

“Oh, you think he’s pretty too?”

“What?! I—no! Geez, Hav, he’s _objectively_ pretty, alright? I don’t—you know I’m not—oh, you _arsehole_.”

This last was growled as Jean devolved into mad cackling. Breda grumbled a few more insults as Jean got ahold of himself, then promptly demanded Jean tell him everything Mustang had said, hinted, or even slightly implied about his plans for the next week. Roy was still being his unnecessarily cagey self, apparently. A frustrating habit for subordinates, as Jean knew all too well, but now he could only grin fondly at Breda’s griping. 

When he didn’t join in on the complaining, though, Breda cut himself off and said accusingly, “You’ve got some stupid sappy look on your face right now, don’t you?”

Jean sputtered, and blushed hotly. “No!”

“Sure, Havvo, sure.”

Jean glared at the wall in the general direction of Central. _Why_ did he miss this asshole, again?

~

The whistle shrieked and the passengers of the 3 o’clock train from Central flooded off the train, swamping the station platform. Jean had parked himself next to one of the broad pillars at the engine side of the arrivals platform and he was very glad of it. The swarming, bustling, shouting crowd parted around the marble column, too preoccupied with their own reunions to pay any attention to him. It was a relief to be just another body in the crowd, not the crippled soldier come home to a small town. That anonymity was something he hadn’t even realized he liked about cities until it was gone.

The crowd thinned out as rapidly as it had appeared, disappearing into the bowels of East Central Station. Jean locked his eyes on the one carriage that hadn’t opened yet, the State arms emblazoned in gold on the door. He drummed his fingers anxiously on a handrim and debated lighting a cigarette. But no, he knew what he wanted to do when those doors opened, what he’d been longing to do ever since Roy had left Bordagne, and a lit cigarette would only get in the way.

Which, since he was also kind of more than a bit terrified of his own plans, meant it was even more tempting than usual to light up and use that as an excuse.

After an eternity that really probably only lasted a matter of seconds, a conductor opened the carriage door and the familiar blue-and-gold uniforms appeared. A pair of corporals, first, who must have been from the 5th for how familiar they looked, though Jean couldn’t put names to them. They trotted down the steps the conductor had unrolled and snapped smartly into flanking positions.

Jean took a deep breath, flipped his brakes, and began to wheel forward, away from the shelter of the pillar and towards the carriage.

Fuery exited first, arms full of bundles of papers and Hayate’s leash dangling from an elbow. He was shaking his head as he descended, a small smile gracing his lips. Something that felt a lot like loss sat like a stone in Jean’s throat. He knew that look on Fuery’s face, recognized the way he laughed at whatever antics Mustang’s team was up to. Antics that had nearly always involved Jean, once.

Jean rolled to a stop what felt like both too far away and too close all at once and took a moment to regret absolutely every choice he’d made since he woke up in the hotel room that morning. He should have shaved, he should have worn something different, should not have come at all—

Fuery spotted Jean and lit up with a broad grin.

“Havoc!” he called, and he picked up his pace, half-jogging towards Jean. Jean grinned back, but it felt shaky. He glanced towards the carriage door and saw some unfamiliar faces emerging, and a very familiar shock of red hair behind them. Then Fuery was in front of him, bouncing on the balls of his feet and still grinning fit to burst. It was really weird to be looking _up_ at Fuery, Jean thought.

“Hey! How are you? I didn’t know you’d be here!”

“I, uh, well, good, you know. Considering.” He gestured awkwardly at himself, trying for a smile. Jean had yet to manage one that felt anything other than stiff and awkward in response to that question.

“Oh, yeah,” Fuery flushed and juggled his armload to shove his glasses back up his nose. “But you’re healing up well?”

That was a surprisingly much easier question to answer. Not one he got asked very often.

“Yeah, real good, actually. Only going into the hospital for PT, now. You lose Hawkeye’s dog?”

Jean nodded at the leash dangling from Fuery’s arm, distinctly dogless. Just because it was an easier question to answer didn’t mean he really wanted to dwell on his injury and recovery, especially here and now. 

Looking over Fuery’s shoulder he saw Breda at the foot of the stairs. He was speaking with the two corporals and the handful of other soldiers who had emerged. Hawkeye stood silhouetted in the doorway, a straight-backed, imposing figure obviously surveying the entire station. One of her hands lay on the butt of her service pistol and a prickle of unease crawled up Jean’s neck. Was she expecting trouble?

His own hip, where he’d worn a pistol for most of the past decade, felt suddenly empty.

“—and then I had to pick up all of this—” Fuery jostled the thick stack of dog-eared papers and battered yellow envelopes in his arms, “—so I thought I may as well grab the leash, too, because everyone was packing up and Hawkeye had stepped out.”

Jean ran his palms along his chair’s handrims and said vaguely, “Right, yeah, makes sense.” 

Fuery was quiet for a moment, studying Jean intently. Jean grinned at him, and tried to think of something else to say, to keep the conversation going, but his stomach was tying itself in knots. He glanced over Fuery’s shoulder again. Hawkeye had moved from the doorway and Breda had mustered the cluster of soldiers into two tidy rows. _Soon_. Jean’s heart was pounding in his throat.

“Um, did you want to… am I in your way?” It was only at Fuery’s question that Jean noticed he was rolling back and forth, just an inch or two each way, rhythmically.

Fuery’s look of concern only deepened when Jean grinned at him. He hadn’t thought it was that manic of a grin, but maybe it was.

“No, no, I, uh—I have to—”

Another uniformed figure, this time draped in black, appeared at the carriage door. The figure paused, for a moment, all casual nonchalance with hands in his pockets and shoulders at a rakish tilt. Jean’s heart leapt, and he shoved himself forward with shaking hands. Then Roy Mustang straightened his shoulders and descended from the carriage, every inch the general. By the time he was accepting salutes from the rank and file, Jean had gotten close enough to see the shadows under his eyes and the wry look he slanted Hawkeye’s way.

Jean stopped a few feet shy of her. He could feel the weight of her sharp gaze on him, but he only had eyes for Roy—who had just spotted him and visibly brightened, quickening his pace. 

“Jean!” It hadn’t even been a week, nothing at all compared to the vast desert of months before the Promised Day, but damn, if he hadn’t missed that voice.

“Hey,” he croaked, and then Roy was there, hand outstretched. Jean grabbed it tight, willed his traitorous hands not to shake, and pulled Roy down to him.

“I’d really like to kiss you. Right now,” Jean muttered, his lips close enough to brush the soft curve of Roy’s ear. He felt Roy go very, very still.

Then Roy squeezed Jean’s hand and said, just loud enough for Jean to hear the smirk in his voice, “I guess it’s true what they say about a man in uniform.”

“You _ass_ ,” Jean groaned, but they were turning towards each other like it was the most natural thing in the world, and Roy’s gloved hands were grazing Jean’s cheeks and curling into his hair. Jean ran a hand up Roy’s arm, muscles firm even through the layers of cloth, and they were kissing.

It was not the longest kiss they’d ever shared, or the fiercest or most passionate. But it burned, in a way it never had before, and it felt like everyone in the world could see them. He was aware, far more aware than ever, of the softness of Roy’s lips and the slide of tongue, the bump of chin and nose, the way Roy leaned into him even as they parted, paused, then kissed again. And he was very, very aware, of a familiar voice whooping “Get it, Havvo!” in the background.

They parted a second time, and Jean yearned to reach up again and chase the kiss even further. But a little voice that sounded a lot like his mother fussed at him about proper public behaviour—and Roy was drawing back a little, a bemused arch to his brow.

“ _Get it?_ ” he repeated, dry as dust. Jean grinned, unrepentant. Like Roy didn’t know Breda by now. And Jean couldn’t feel anything but pleased at the sight Roy made before him, flushed pink and breathing heavily.

Roy cleared his throat and straightened up fully, pausing to wipe a thumb over his lips. Then those sturdy shoulders squared up and he turned to face Breda. Jean couldn’t be bothered to look, too fascinated by watching Roy’s face, but he knew Breda was definitely grinning like a maniac.

“Do you have something to say, First Lieutenant?” Roy said, in his most officious Commanding Officer voice.

Breda just said cheerfully, “Congratulations, sir!”

There was dramatic sighing and a bout of moaning about getting no respect from Roy, and then Hawkeye was at his side, urging them forward. For a moment, Jean hesitated, unsure if he should continue forward with the others but before he could even begin to turn, Hawkeye fixed him with a stern glare. So he stayed right where he was, at Roy’s side, as they headed forward into East Central Station.


End file.
